Street Child
The term street children is used to refer to children who live on the streets. They are deprived of family care and protection. Most children on the streets are between the ages of 10 and 14 years old, and their populace between different cities is varied. ‘Street children ’street urchins’ are homeless children who live on the street. In particular, those that are not taken care of by parents or other adults. Street children live in abandoned buildings, containers, automobiles, parks, or on the street itself. A great deal has been written defining street children. The problem is that there are no precise categories but rather a continuum ranging from children who spend some time in the streets but basically live at home to those who live entirely in the streets and have no adult supervision or care.
A widely accepted set of definitions, commonly attributed to UNICEF, defines street children into two main categories:
- Children on the street are those engaged in some kind of economic activity ranging from begging to vending. Most go home at the end of the day and contribute their earnings to their family. They may be attending school and retain a sense of belonging to a family. Because of the economic fragility of the family, these children may eventually opt for a permanent life on the streets.
- Children of the street actually live on the street (or outside of a normal family environment). Family ties may exist but are tenuous and are maintained only casually or occasionally.[1]
Street children exist in many major cities, especially in developing countries, and may be the subject of abuse, neglect, exploitation, or even in extreme cases murder by “clean up squads” hired by local businesses.[2]
In Latin America, a common cause is abandonment by poor families unable to feed all their children. In Africa, an increasingly common cause is AIDS.
Definitions
The question of how to define a street child has generated much discussion that is usefully summarized by Sarah Thomas de Benítez in, “The State of the World’s Street Children: Violence.”
‘Street children’ is increasingly recognized by sociologists and anthropologists to be a socially constructed category that in reality does not form a clearly defined, homogeneous population or phenomenon (Glauser, 1990; Ennew, 2000; Moura, 2002). ‘Street children’ covers children in such a wide variety of circumstances and characteristics that policy-makers and service providers find it difficult to describe and target them. Upon peeling away the ‘street children’ label, individual girls and boys of all ages are found living and working in public spaces, visible in the great majority of the world’s urban centres.[3]
The definition of ‘street children’ is contested, but many practitioners and policymakers use UNICEF’s concept of boys and girls aged under 18 for whom ‘the street’ (including unoccupied dwellings and wasteland) has become home and/or their source of livelihood, and who are inadequately protected or supervised (Black, 1993).[4]
Names
Street Children is a widely used term in the English language and has analogues in other languages such as French (les enfants des rues), Spanish (niños de la calle), Portuguese (meninos da rua) and German (straßenkinder). Street kids is also commonly employed although it is sometimes thought to be pejorative. [5] In other languages children who live and/or work in the streets are known by many names. Some examples are listed below:
“gamin” (urchin) and “chinches” (bed bugs) in Colombia, “marginais” (criminals/marginals) in Rio, “pajaro frutero” (fruit birds) in Peru, “polillas” (moths) in Bolivia, “resistoleros” (little rebels) in Honduras, “scugnizzi” (spinning tops) in Naples, “Bui Doi” (dust children) in Vietnam, “saligoman” (nasty kids) in Rwanda, or “poussins” (chicks), “moustiques” (mosquitos) in Cameroon and “balados” (wanderers) in Zaire and Congo.[6]
Numbers, Distribution and Gender
Numbers
Estimates vary but one often-cited figure is that the number of children living independently in the streets totals between 100 million and 150 million worldwide.
According to a report from the Consortium for Street Children, a United Kingdom based consortium of related NGOs:
Estimating numbers of ‘street children’ is fraught with difficulties. In 1989, UNICEF estimated 100 million children were growing up on urban streets around the world. 14 years later UNICEF reported: ‘The latest estimates put the numbers of these children as high as 100 million’ (UNICEF, 2002: 37). And even more recently: ‘The exact number of street children is impossible to quantify, but the figure almost certainly runs into tens of millions across the world. It is likely that the numbers are increasing’ (UNICEF, 2005: 40-41). The 100 million figure is still commonly cited, but has no basis in fact (see Ennew and Milne, 1989; Hecht, 1998; Green, 1998). Similarly, it is debatable whether numbers of street children are growing globally or whether it is the awareness of street children within societies which has grown.[7]
Distribution
Street children may be found on every continent in a large majority of the world’s cities. The following estimates indicate the global extent of street child populations.
- Kenya 250,000 – 300,000[8]
- Egypt 200,000 – 1 million[9]
- Morocco 30,000[10]
- India 11 million[11]
- Vietnam 23,000[12]
- Mongolia 3700 – 4000[13]
- Philippines 200,000[14]
- Brazil 1 – 10 million (conflicting estimates)[15]
- Uruguay 3000[16]
- Jamaica 6,500[17]
- Russia 1 – 3 million[18]
While the majority are in underdeveloped or poor countries, they are also found in highly industrialized and relatively rich states such as Germany (10,000)[19] and the USA (750,000 to 1 million).[20]
Gender
Although there are variations from country to country, 70% or more of street children are boys.[21][22]
History
Children sleeping in Mulberry Street – Jacob Riis photo New York, United States of America (1890)
Children making their home/livelihoods on the street is not a new or modern phenomenon. In the introduction to his history of abandoned children in Soviet Russia 1918 -1930, Alan Ball states:
Orphaned and abandoned children have been a source of misery from earliest times. They apparently accounted for most of the boy prostitutes in Augustan Rome and, a few centuries later, moved a church council of 442 in southern Gaul to declare: “Concerning abandoned children: there is general complaint that they are nowadays exposed more to dogs than to kindness.”[1] In tsarist Russia, seventeenth-century sources described destitute youths roaming the streets, and the phenomenon survived every attempt at eradication thereafter. Long before the Russian Revolution, the term besprizornye had gained wide currency.[2][23]
In 1890, Danish-American journalist Jacob Riis described “street arabs” in New York and his description of their characteristics and mode of life could easily be applied to modern street children.[24]
Examples from popular fiction include Kipling’s “Kim” as a street child in colonial India, and Fagin’s crew of pickpockets in “Oliver Twist” as well as Sherlock Holmes’ “Baker Street Irregulars” attest to the presence of street children in 19th century London.
Causes
Children may end up on the streets for several basic reasons: They may have no choice – they are abandoned, orphaned, or thrown out of their homes. Secondly, they may choose to live in the streets because of mistreatment or neglect or because their homes do not or cannot provide them with basic necessities. Many children also work in the streets because their earnings are needed by their families. But homes and families are part of the larger society and the underlying reasons for the poverty or breakdown of homes and families may be social, economic, political or environmental or any combination of these.
In a 1993 report, WHO offered the following list of causes for the phenomenon:[25]
- family breakdown
- armed conflict
- poverty
- natural and man-made disasters
- famine
- physical and sexual abuse
- exploitation by adults
- dislocation through migration
- urbanization and overcrowding
- acculturation
The orphaning of children as a result of HIV/AIDS is another cause that might be added to this list.
adapted From : wikipedia.org
