Street Children: A glimpse of their individuality

Street children throughout the world are subjected to physical abuse by police or are even murdered outright, as governments treat them as a blight to be eradicated rather than as children to be nurtured and protected.

They are frequently detained arbitrarily simply because they are homeless, or criminally charged with vague offenses such as loitering, vagrancy, or petty theft. They are tortured or beaten by police and often held for long periods in poor conditions. Girls are sexually abused, coerced into sexual acts, or raped by police.

Street children also make up a large proportion of the children who enter criminal justice systems and are committed finally to correctional institutions (prisons) that are euphemistically called schools, often without due process. Few advocates speak up for these children, and few street children have family members or concerned individuals willing and able to intervene on their behalf.

The term street children refers to children for whom the street more than their family has become their real home. It includes children who might not necessarily be homeless or without families, but who live in situations where there is no protection, supervision, or direction from responsible adults.

While street children receive national and international public attention, the attention has been focused largely on the social, economic and health problems of the children — poverty, lack of education, AIDS, prostitution, and substance abuse. With the exception of the massive killings of the street children in the Philippines often by their parents and relatives, very little attention has been paid to the constant police violence and abuse from which many children suffer. 

The public view of street children in many countries is overwhelmingly negative. The public has often supported efforts to get these children off the street, even though they may result in police round ups, or even murder.

There is an alarming tendency by some law enforcement personnel and civilians, business proprietors and their private security firms, to view street children as almost sub-human.

The disturbing notion of “social cleansing” is applied to street children even when they are not distinguished as members of a particular racial, ethnic, or religious group. Branded as “anti-social,” or demonstrating “anti-social behavior,” street children are viewed with suspicion and fear by many who would simply like to see them disappear.

The failure of law enforcement bodies to promptly and effectively investigate and prosecute cases of abuse against street children allows violence to continue. Establishing police accountability is further hampered by the fact that street children often have no recourse but to complain directly to police about police abuses. The threat of police reprisals against them serves as a serious deterrent to any child coming forward to testify against an officer.

Here in the Philippines, Human Rights Watch has worked with NGOs and street workers to encourage the establishment of a network for documenting and reporting police abuses against street children, and to improve children’s treatment by police.

Jennilyn Magbag
M.H. Del Pilar St.
Calumpang, Marikina City                                                          

August 23,2002 

Manila Times

The Street Children

    There are very few conditions in life that can be more adverse than to be young and live in the streets of major cities in the world. Estimates reported by the WHO Project on Street Children and Substance Abuse put the number of street children between 10 and 100 million worldwide. The criteria for defining street children vary from country to country and with time, making it difficult to arrive at any precise global estimates.

     In the Philippines, there are 1.5 million street children nation-wide. About 75,000 of them are found in Metro Manila alone. Why are these children and youth on the streets? The interweaving political, economic, and psychological conditions that drive children to the streets are too complex to give a simple explanation for this worldwide phenomenon.

     Poverty, like the kind spawned by the political and socioeconomic conditions in many developing countries, is the most commonly cited leading cause. Most children of poor families are forced to stop going to school and instead go to the streets to earn. However, beyond poverty, one suspects that the breakdown of traditional family and community values and structures serves as a major factor in the increase of children on the streets.

    Symptoms of such breakdown include the neglect and abuse of children, dysfunctional parents who could not adequately care for their children, lack of support from the traditional extended family system, abuse of psychoactive substances by the parents or by other members of the family, domestic violence, lack of employment opportunities, lack of access to basic community services, congestion in slum areas, violence in the community, deterioration of values permitting exploitation of children, and finally, break-up of families.

    Children and youths on the streets experience serious health risks and physical danger. They are exposed to high levels of violence, victimization, sexual exploitation by pedophiles and pimps, and to the use of harmful substances. Many suffer from psychiatric symptoms and mental health problems.

    The percentage of substance abusers among street children varies greatly. Studies in different parts of the world indicate that between 25% to 90% of street children abuse psychoactive and harmful substances. In the Philippines, about 50% of street children abuse substances. The most common substances used include: alcohol, nicotine, inhalants, marijuana, and amphetamines.

    In the Philippines, a large number of governmental and non-governmental organizations (often referred to as agencies by the street children)  responded to the growing crisis of street children. Community based, center based, and street    based programs of intervention were  created  to  help  these  children  and  their  families. These interventions primarily addressed the deficits in the environment of these children that pushed them to life in the streets. In the course of their work, people involved in helping street children were impressed with the remarkable capacity of these children to survive well the adversities of life in the streets. Not only do they overcome these adversities, but are also made stronger by their encounter with the adversities. Though confronted everyday with the multiple risk factors in their environment, they had been able to avoid substance abuse, prostitution, teen-age pregnancy, and other major pitfalls in living on the streets. These children were later identified as resilient.

Cornelio G. Banaag,M.D.

Prevention Perspectives

November 2002, Vol. 3