Street children
[8] Street children are often subject to abuse, neglect, exploitation, or, in extreme cases, murder by "clean-up squads" that have been hired by local businesses or police.
[9] Street children can be found in a large majority of the world's famous cities, with the phenomenon more prevalent in densely populated urban hubs of developing or economically unstable regions, such as countries in Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia.
Fourteen years later, in 2002 UNICEF similarly reported, "The latest estimates put the numbers of these children as high as one hundred million".
More recently the organization added, "The exact number of street children is impossible to quantify, but the figure almost certainly runs into tens of millions across the world.
[12] The one hundred million figure is still commonly cited for street children, but is not based on currently available academic research.
In 1848, Lord Ashley referred to more than 30,000 "naked, filthy, roaming lawless, and deserted children" in and around London, UK.
This includes, but is not limited to: poverty; breakdown of homes and/or families; political unrest; acculturation; sexual, physical or emotional abuse; domestic violence; being lured away by pimps, internet predators, or begging syndicates; mental health problems; substance abuse; and sexual orientation or gender identity issues.
For example, some children in parts of the Congo and Uganda are made to leave their families on suspicion of being witches who bring bad luck.
Rural-urban migration broke up extended families which had previously acted as a support network, taking care of children in cases of abuse, neglect, and abandonment.
[31] When considering India as a whole, there are approximately 18 million children who earn their living off the streets in cities and rural areas.
[34] Owing to unemployment, increasing rural-urban migration, the attraction of city life, and a lack of political will, India has developed one of the largest child labor forces in the world.
"They are detained, subjected to verbal and physical abuse, their means of livelihood (guitars for busking, goods for sale) confiscated, and some have been shot attempting to flee the police.
[40] Issues like domestic violence, unemployment, natural disasters, poverty, unequal industrialization, unplanned rapid urbanization, family disintegration and lack of education are considered the major factors behind the increase in the number of street children.
Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC) carried out a study which presented 56.5% of the children interviewed in Multan, 82.2% in Karachi, 80.5% in Hyderabad and 83.3% in Sukkur were forced to move on to the streets after the 2010 and 2011 floods.
Street children as young as ten years old can be imprisoned alongside adults under the country's Vagrancy Act; in past cases, physical and sexual abuse have occurred as a result of this legislation.
[46][47] In 2018, Daily NK reported that the government was interning kotjebi in kwalliso camps and that the children there were beginning to suffer from malnutrition due to low rations.
In 1966, in communist Romania, ruler Nicolae Ceauşescu outlawed contraception and abortion, enacting an aggressive natalist policy, in an effort to increase the population.
The struggle of families was made worse in the 1980s, when the state agreed to implement an austerity program in exchange for international loans, leading to a dramatic drop in living standards and to food rationing; and the fall of communism in December 1989 meant additional economic and social insecurity.
During the transition period from communism to market economy in the 1990s, social issues such as those of these children were low on the government's agenda.
[citation needed] According to UNICEF, there were 64,000 homeless street children brought to hospitals by various governmental services (e.g. police) in 2005.
[60] Of Turkey's 30,891 street children, 30,109 live in Istanbul, research conducted by the Turkish Prime Ministry's Human Rights Presidency (BİHB) has shown.
Based on unofficial estimates, 88,000 children in Turkey live on the streets, and the country has the fourth-highest rate of underage substance abuse in the world.
[69] In the United States, street children are predominantly Caucasian, female, and 42% identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT).
[72] In Honduras between 1998 and 2002, hundreds of street children were reportedly abducted, tortured and murdered by police and civilian "cleanup squads".
[76] The Brazilian government estimates that the number of children and adolescents in 2012 who work or sleep on the streets was approximately 23,973,[77] based on results from the national census mandated by the Human Rights Secretariat of the Presidency (SDH) and the Institute for Sustainable Development (Idesp).
Youth homelessness has been subject to a number of independent studies, some calling for the Australian Human Rights Commission to conduct an inquiry on the matter.
[84] Non-government organizations employ a wide variety of strategies to address the needs and rights of street children.
Other examples from popular fiction include Kim, from Rudyard Kipling's novel of the same name, who is a street child in colonial India.
Gavroche, in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, Fagin's crew of child pickpockets in Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, a similar group of child thieves in Cornelia Funke's The Thief Lord, and Sherlock Holmes' "Baker Street Irregulars" are other notable examples of the presence of street children in popular works of literature.
These refuges were founded by local youth workers, providing crisis accommodation, and soon began getting funding from the Australian government.
