This document discusses street children around the world. It describes street children as boys and girls under 18 who live on the streets and use public spaces as a home due to lack of adequate protection. Some key reasons children end up on the streets include poverty, family breakdown, parental death from diseases like AIDS, and physical/sexual abuse. Living on the streets exposes children to exploitation, abuse, poor health, lack of education, and conflict with the law. Estimates suggest there are up to 150 million street children worldwide.

2. Prof. Ruth Sieglinde Jara Kittel
Magister in Criminology

3. Street children
They are children experiencing homelessness and live
on the streets of a city.
Homeless youth are often called
street kids and street youth.
They are boys and girls, aged under eighteen years, 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…..

5. Article 3
1. In all actions concerning children, whether
undertaken by public or private social welfare
institutions, courts of law, administrative
authorities or legislative bodies
the best interests of the child shall be a primary
consideration.
The Rights of the Child.

6. The rights of women and children are rarely
recognized in many societies . A lack of
education and a fear of reprisal actions prohibit
them from voicing these rights.
Though many countries have signed and
ratified the United Nations Convention on the
Rights of the Child (UNCRC), they have failed to
enact a domestic child protection law to uphold
the principles in this international treaty.

7. Homelessness
is largely an urban phenomenon, yet children are homeless
and living on the streets in every region of the world from
developing countries to the most affluent countries.
Latin America and India , for example, are known for their
large populations of street children, despite the significant
efforts of some governments and non-governmental
organizations…..

8. The AIDS epidemic and civil wars in Africa have caused a
surge in the number of street children as a result of the
abandonment of AIDS orphans or fatalities due to armed
conflict.
Failing economies and falling currencies in parts of Asia
force the poorest families onto the street, often leaving
children abandoned and homeless.
Unstable political transitions, such as the end of
dictatorships, have caused unprecedented numbers of
street children due to inadequate social security for the
poor and those formerly State supported.

11. The reasons children go to the streets are unique to
their individual situations.
Often there isn’t one simple reason why a child is on
the streets.
Rather, a combination of multiple factors drive
children to a life on the streets,
including poverty, neglect, the breakdown of the
family, losing one or both parents to HIV/AIDS or
other prevalent diseases
and
verbal, physical, and sexual abuse....

12. Homeless children from Easter Europe

13. These children
lack the basic necessities of
food, health care and a safe place to stay.
Homeless children are unable to afford an education,
and they miss out on the important life skills that are
usually learned in the home.
Children living on the street face the constant
prospect of physical, verbal and sexual abuse from
peers and adults.

14. Sniffing glue and petrol
is a common way to dull
hunger pains
and
blot out the violence they
face on a daily basis.

15. The problems associated with street children extend
beyond the plight of the children themselves.
The entire society is impoverished by the lost
potential of homeless children and youth.
In the long term, street children end up unskilled and
jobless, often resorting to crime.....

16. Once on the street,
children become vulnerable to all forms of exploitation and
abuse and their daily lives are likely to be far removed from
the childhood envisioned in the Convention on the Rights of
the Child.
In some cases, those who are entrusted to protect them
become the perpetrators of crimes against them.
Street children have been harassed or beaten by police and
often find themselves in conflict with the law.
Some have been rounded up, driven outside city limits and
left there….
Other have been murdered by vigilantes in the name of
'cleaning up the city', often with the complicity or disregard of
local authorities….

17. There are up
to 150 million
street children
in the world today.

19. Whose responsibility are these
children?

21. You can hear their cries at night,
You hear them, and put them out of minds sight,
Don't want to face it,
No you can't embrace it,
That when you go past that road where you last saw her,
She will no longer be there that street girl, that pauper,
But what can we do? ….
It's not my business so "shoo! “
Why should we care?

22. Their only street children that are worse for wear,
But deep down it should hurt you,
Can't you feel that feeling just that little bit blue?
For the lonely child who curl up cold at night,
Who lives and terror, fear and fright,
Yet others will simply not see the plea in their eyes,
And ignore their moans and desperate cries,
Though they push through,
With hunger and heart with nothing else to do,
Searching for food when the night comes to a closure,
Searching in the morning for scraps of food left over…

23. Caring for their relatives if they have any,
Begging and begging for spare change or a penny,
Yes they once had a life and a family,
Yet look at them now and what they've come to be,
But weather you believe it or not,
They still have feelings while their happiness will rot…

24. They have to avoid the police, as they are not good,
And don't give support like you'd expect they would,
But each child has their memories, There old life their story,
Only their love to poses as their pride and glory,
Hardly any food at all, only crumbs so not a lot,
And their names and identity, long forgot,
So if you hear something when it's dark, don't turn on that
light,
Because you already know that's the street children's cries
echoing through the night…..
Jem Solley