Nobody ever listened to me

“NOBODY EVER LISTENED TO ME…”

A researcher, after each session with a child on the street, tried to offer some suggestion or help. After one four hour interview with a teenager whose life seemed totally wrecked, the researcher could not think what to say and apologised profusely that she could offer no help. The girl replied:

“You’ve already helped me. You’re the first person in my life who’s ever listened to me.”
UK - Railway Children

CHAPTER 1 - WHY?

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 2: “State parties shall respect and ensure the rights set forth in the present Convention to each child in their jurisdiction without discrimination of any kind.”

I guess there have always been street children. There has even been reference to street children in ancient Rome. We are just more aware of them now, or at least, we know now that it is a global phenomenon, especially as urbanisation has increased. We have always been aware of the orphans and beggar children on our own doorstep even if we, or the society we live in, chose to ignore them. It is not just an issue in the developing world. Charles Dickens wrote about the street children of London in ‘Oliver Twist’. Today there are over 100,000 reported runaway children under the age of sixteen each year in the UK - and many of these finish up living for a time on the street. We just do not call them street children. The situation is similar in Western Europe and in North America.

No-one has ever conducted an accurate global analysis of the numbers of such children although UNICEF in the 1990s made an estimate that ran into tens of millions - most in Latin America and South Asia, although in the last decade large increases have been reported in Africa and Eastern Europe, as a result of conflicts and the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa and the collapse of communism and the resultant huge increase in unemployment in the former USSR state industries and its impact on the stability of families. The number of vulnerable children in many continents of the world seems to be increasing rather than decreasing as rapid urbanisation and large flows of immigrants result in the spread of slums with their inadequate infrastructure and high proportion of children. Despite the fact that we seem to know more about them as a result of global communications and publicity from the number of voluntary organisations seeking to help them, we seem no nearer to providing all our children with the support they need at critical times in their lives. UNICEF, in a recent annual report on the state of the world’s children concluded that the UN Millennium Development Goals for 2015 were unlikely to be achieved for children in North Africa and the Middle East, in West and Central Africa, and in South Asia.

We do not, of course, know the real number of street children; indeed we find it difficult to define who is a ‘street child’. Most children we label in this way are vulnerable and often destitute children who live in slums and favelas and who spend the majority of their days on the street attempting to eke out a survival by scavenging, begging or finding some informal trade opportunity to earn a few pence to bring back to their impoverished families at night. A small proportion - perhaps around 5-10% - survive full time on the streets, they work, eat, play and sleep there with, too often, only other street children as their companions and support.

And why are they there? Are they the ‘Dick Whittingtons’ of this age, seeking the ‘pavements of gold’ of the world’s mega cities? Perhaps a few children are lured to the bright lights of Bollywood in Mumbai, or what they perceive to be their earning potential in Mexico City or Rio or Nairobi, but they are soon disillusioned. The vast majority of children who leave their homes for the streets are running away from situations they find intolerable or impossible. When the Consortium for Street Children was launched in 1993 at a reception given by the then Prime Minister, John Major, I undertook a risk assessment of being a street child - developing with the other member organisations an outline analysis of causes and consequences. We found three immediate reasons for children coming to the street - they are sent there by their families to earn money and become detached; they are running away from physical, sexual or emotional abuse; or they have been neglected, abandoned or orphaned without extended family support to care for them. In 1993 a street children organisation in Mumbai carried out a simple questionnaire with a thousand street children in the city. Most of the questions were factual, but the last one was, “If you had just one wish, what would it be?” 90% of the children answered, “To have a family who loved me.”

Most of these children are there, then, because they feel they have been rejected. Some people believe that the problem is just a result of crushing poverty, but rarely is poverty alone a cause for a child running away. Many have suffered violence in the home, at school or in their community. If you examine the records of phone help lines in any part of the world, you will discover that domestic violence and family conflict is the most frequent immediate cause or trigger of children running away - either as victims themselves or through the intolerable experience of watching their mothers or siblings being abused.

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“I got a stepfather and found out at the age of fifteen that he wasn’t my real dad and things went pear-shaped…And the worst thing was me finding out from someone else, not my parents. My mum lied to me - she said she did it to protect me. So I left home and was away for nine months. I got into the wrong crowd…they were into drugs..”

16 year old boy, UK - Railway Children
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"It was a normal hot and sunny day in Guatemala City. Directly across the road from me was a boy, probably about 14 years of age, slumped against a wall covered in posters of past concerts, rallies and the passing circus. His hands were squeezing a plastic bag containing glue. I walked over and sat down next to him. We sat there for a while before I said hello and told him my name. No further words were uttered as we both watched the traffic thunder past, now and again fanning the black smoke away from our faces as a bus drove past. Eventually the boy spoke to me.
'My name is Francisco,' he said. Little by little he opened up and then told me his story. Francisco lived with his family in the countryside. He and his father never really got on with each other. His mum would console him every time his father beat him. They were farmers and Francisco had always wanted to travel to Guatemala City. He had heard so many stories of life there.
One day Francisco was invited by his father to go with him to the capital and get some supplies. After sixteen hours on buses, Francisco and his father arrived in Guatemala City. They walked for a while down busy streets, arriving at a large supermarket. 'I'm just going in here to get some supplies,' Francisco's dad said to him, 'wait for me here.' Francisco waited, and waited, and waited. With tears in his eyes he told me how he had waited outside the supermarket for a whole week before he realised that he had been aband¬oned. Some days, people gave him food. Then a young street boy befriended him and took him to his gang. The boys taught Francisco how to steal, beg, guard and wash cars. Anything he earned or stole had to be shared with the group. That was one of the basic rules. Francisco also learned how to sniff glue and use drugs. His life as a street kid had begun. Now the school of the street was open for class and Francisco became a very diligent pupil."

Francisco, Guatemala City – Street Kids Direct
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The United Nations General Assembly in 2006 received a special study on children and violence and the report from the special rapporteur and investigator, Brazilian professor Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, found - from the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) sources - that 53,000 children were murdered in 2002; between 80% and 98% of children in different countries had been subject to physical punishment (a third of them severely, involving injury); 150 million girls and 73 million boys had suffered forced sexual intercourse or assault in 2002; between 100 and 140 million girls in the world had been subject to female genital mutilation and three million girls every year still underwent this violation in Sub-Saharan Africa, Egypt and the Sudan; 218 million children were engaged in child labour - (126 million of them in hazardous activities), although there has been a reduction of up to 25% in the last five years because of many determined programmes to combat this abuse; 5.7 million children were in forced or bonded labour; 1.8 million children were in the sex trade - prostitution or pornography; and 1.2 million children were victims of trafficking.

Another study commissioned by the Indian Government reported in 2007 that two out of every three children out of 12,447 children interviewed in 13 sampled states in India had been physically abused - of these nearly 90% had received physical violence from a parent, 65% had received corporal punishment in schools. 53% of children reported one or more forms of sexual abuse, 22% being severe involving violation of the body. Few of these children had reported such abuse, but some just ran away from intolerable situations.

The violence and abuse perpetrated on children within families and communities frequently is a result of the stresses and strains of intolerable living and employment conditions, ignored or unsupported by governments failing to live up to their commitments in Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Other root causes identified by the risk analysis included the effect of natural catastrophes such as earthquakes, hurricanes and typhoons, floods and, of course, the 2004 tsunami, which disrupted the lives of children, orphaned many, made many more homeless and destitute. Armed conflicts and civil wars are further causes of vulnerable children taking to the street - as refugees, child soldiers, witnesses of atrocities affecting their families and communities, many children left to pick up the pieces alone subsequently. In the last decade 90% of casualties in conflict situations have been civilians, most children and the elderly. The ravages of the HIV/AIDS pandemic has rendered many children orphans, not just in Africa, but in parts of Latin America, India and Eastern Europe too. Under the strain, traditional child care by extended families has often broken down leaving young children to fend for themselves. And the teething problems of adopting capitalism since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe has seen much unemployment and an increase in drug addiction and alcoholism leading to the neglect and abuse of children there, their removal to state orphanages and the fact that many children then vote with their feet over the inadequacies they find there.

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"Angelique was born in Rwanda, near the border with Tanzania. Her parents were murdered during the genocide there. The organisation Streets Ahead Children’s Centre Association (SACCA) investigated known prostitution houses in Kaborondo where young girls were said to be sold into the sex trade. They found Angelique who was only eight years old. She did not like to admit she was being sold and claimed she was living with an old woman who owned the house. SACCA took her to their centre. They discovered that after the genocide she had been living with an uncle whose wife tortured her when he was at work. When she ran away she was picked up by the old woman who took her to the brothel. Being a stranger to the area, Angelique had no choice but to stay and do as she was told. SACCA traced her grandmother - Angelique, now fourteen, studies at SACCA but visits her grandmother at every opportunity."

Angelique, Rwanda - World Jewish Relief
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Most people associate street children and runaways with teenagers - perhaps young teenagers. Whilst this may be true for some countries, particularly in Latin America and high income countries, many children are much younger. Many NGOs report that the average age of a child they find coming to street life in India is only eight. I have myself encountered children of four or five surviving without adult support and my own call to work for such children stemmed from being accosted by a six or seven year old girl on a Mumbai railway station who was whipping herself to arouse sympathy for her begging, exploited no doubt by an unscrupulous adult nearby. I have met children born and raised on the street, conceived by street girls who had been raped or succumbed to survival sex.

Most street children are boys, perhaps overall as many as 80%. But there are exceptions to this - in certain Indian cities such as Kolkata, surveys have identified nearly 50% to be girls although most of these will still be attached to some sort of family. Lone children on the street are predominantly boys, although girls in this situation are the most vulnerable and sometimes disguise themselves as boys for their own protection. In some cultures, girls are better protected in the home, or are needed for household chores and looking after younger siblings, so the willingness to let girls escape to the street is lower. However, well-meant pressures to reduce the use of children in the sex trade and in domestic unpaid service has often meant that those girls have found themselves destitute on the street where no back-up development action has followed efforts to eradicate their previous abuse.

In some countries girls predominate amongst the runaway population - for some unknown reason this is especially true in developed countries. It is estimated that nearly two thirds of runaway children in the UK are girls. Recent research into the lives of children who spent more than a month living on UK streets when still under the age of sixteen, indicated that girls may feel more vulnerable when in abusive situations and are inclined to flee whereas boys are able - this is perhaps an oversimplification - to escape the impact of abuse by escaping to the streets with their mates during the day whilst remaining at home to sleep. In Western culture it also seems easier for a girl to admit that she needs help and take action, whereas for boys this is not seen as a ‘macho’ thing to do.

There is also evidence from a number of countries (including Russia and the UK) that a significant proportion of child runaways are fleeing state or private children’s homes and orphanages. Children in such institutions are already often damaged by their previous experiences and are vulnerable to further abuse and bullying from older children and staff. Running away may seem to be a more attractive option to them.

On a positive note, many street children have strong characters and are particularly resilient to their situation. Some children are not ready to accept what they perceive as abuse, rejection or neglect and will select the dangers of the street as preferable to the situation they are fleeing. These children are moving from being reactive to victimisation to making proactive choices. Such children with initiative deserve support to fulfil their potential instead of becoming prey to those who would exploit them or lead them into criminal or further abusive ways.