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Street Children: A Threatening Social Problem
Contributed by: Danilo R. Zuño,Sr./Danilo T. Zuño,Jr.
Street Children - Definition of our Target Group
According to the definition of Ahmed Sedik in the second publication of
PDCR entitled “City Initiative (1) for the Protection of Street Children and
Children Doing Marginal Work” , a street child is “every child, male or
female, who lacks a place of residence, spends the night in places not
appropriate for that for six months or more, whether he/she is defying their
parents’ authority or that of their guardian, is forced into that status by one
of the parents, or has escaped to the street as a result of family, economic,
psychological, vocational, or educational conditions. ” Sedik also puts
forward a general definition of marginal work children that encompasses
the following categories:
 |
Children working with the consent of their parents (either working on |
their own or together with the father or mother).
|
Those working in marginal jobs with no specific vocational pattern, |
and are thus deprived of vocational and family care and often do not
continue their education as a result.
|
Some of those children leave their governorates in order to perform |
selling operations; they are forced to spend the night on the street in
order to save transportation fees, often with the consent of their parents.
|
Those children return to their homes after finishing selling operations in |
a state of physical and psychological exhaustion.
|
Exploitative grown-up elements may appear in their places of work, and |
take away a proportion of the money they earn; or else some adults might collect
the children to perform selling in their interest in return to a specific wage, often
using force against the children.
Dr. Ahmed Sadik
Director
Center for the Protection and Development of the Child and his Rights
