God save the street children

Street children

It 's very difficult to estimate the number of street children in the world: it speaks of 100-150 million, but could be many more. Some work on the streets but live mostly in the family, others return home occasionally and many others no longer have ties with their family for years because they have fled, have been abandoned or were orfani.Una time road hazards and marginalization end to bring them in situations of abuse and violence. They are children who have just 5-6 years and almost all work to survive or begging. Sniffing glue to alleviate the hunger pains, commit petty theft, prostitution. Even the urban contexts in which these children live are very different from the weather and just think of the harsh winters in Eastern Europe where it becomes crucial to have a shelter just to survive. In Bucharest (Romania), more than 5,000 children living in the sewers, the only place that gives them some protection. In the Russian Federation the street children are about a million (60,000 in Moscow alone); Budapest (Hungary) are between 10,000 and 12,500; ten thousand in Latvia and Lithuania in the same number.
Most of the investigations to quantify the overall size of the phenomenon are therefore
estimates, rough estimations, made ​​all the more complex the non-existence of a consensus
internationally about the definition of a street child. The definition most commonly used
(UNICEF) considers the minor street children for whom the street is the home and / or the main
source of livelihood and who are inadequately protected or supervised. the concept
includes children on the street (street-working children) who live in the street and in the evening
come home, and the children of the street (street-living children), which instead have a family
or a home to which to return. A more recent and more comprehensive, adopted
also by the Consortium for Street Children, consider street children for whom the
road is the point of reference and has a central role in their lives.

Extreme poverty, family breakdown, violence and abuse are usually denominator
common to all situations of removal of children, eventually, end up in the street.
Factors compounded by events regional civil wars and pandemic AIDS (Africa), social policies
inadequate and deep inequalities in the distribution income (Latin America),
uncontrolled urbanization, social decay, crisis economic and write-downs
monetary (Asia), transitions precarious political / uncertain and
deterioration of of life (Eastern Europe) .

Like other disadvantaged groups of children, street children are victims, deprived of their
fundamental rights, first among them the right to protection, access to essential services
health and social care, education, care of the family.
Often the parents to send their children to work in the street, so that they can contribute to
family income. In other cases, the road becomes only refuge for children who are rejected,
abandoned by their families and those who run away from home, in search of better prospects in life or
on the run from a life of violence and abuse. Other children in many areas of the world
have alternatives to street life are orphans, displaced persons and refugees, people with disabilities
abandoned.


Several research studies conducted internationally document
the widespread and repeated violence experienced by homeless children
in many countries of the world at the hands of adults who enslave them
in the work of traffickers who sell them or starting them to exploit
prostitution market, of their authorities
protection, which would subject them to ill-treatment and abuse. the
police are responsible for many acts of violence
suffered by children who live on the street, beatings, torture and physical
psychological, sexual abuse, extortion, arbitrary arrests and the release of which is often specious
behind rewards in cash or kind. The same abuses are committed in prisons
youth where street children are locked up and detained, even for acts not covered
as criminal offenses in the Criminal Code. Not infrequently the persecution culminating in the killing of children without
roof, in the course of actual cleaning operations conducted by the police or prey
the aggressions of the social context in which they live.

Deprived of emotional and psychological support, discriminated against, socially excluded and brutalized, very often by subject and witnesses of violence children living on the streets become subject
of violence. Enter the ranks of the gang, organize themselves into groups, steal, commit crimes and
reproduce the harassment and bullying of which they were victims. And 'This is the reason why the
Street children are often stigmatized by the public as criminals, subjects
dangerous to remove, not as individuals who are denied childhood.