Street Children

Street Children

A street child is any boy or girl under the age of 18 who lives, works, or does both, on the street or in any other urban public space, often without the supervision or protection of an adult. The term street children includes those children who live with or without their families and who make their living on the streets, or in other public spaces, full or part time. The street children phenomenon is a global one and although the continents most affected are Latin America, Africa, and Asia, there are more and more children living on the streets in Europe, North America, and Australia.

Nobody knows how many street children there are. Global estimates have ranged from 100 million to 150 million, but these figures are not proven and are impossible to confirm. One reason why street children are so hard to count is because they are often highly mobile, traveling from place to place within a city and from city to city. It is also because many street children have not been registered at birth, have no identity cards, and so officially do not exist.

Boys between the ages of 8 to 17, are the most visible children working on the streets in major cities, although there are also street girls, and their numbers are increasing globally. Street boys earn their money by shining shoes; selling bottled water, cigarettes, and other goods; washing car windows and busking with musical instruments; or by singing or begging at traffic lights, on buses, and on the streets.

Street girls are not as visible as boys, and they usually do not earn their money in the same way, due to gender divisions of labor in the informal sector and the socialization of children in the home. Although less visible and fewer in numbers, street girls often suffer discrimination on the street, because they are seen to be violating ideas of femininity by invading the street, which is considered a male space in most countries. Street girls may get money to survive from their boyfriends or other [Page 777]protectors on the street, and they sometimes beg at traffic lights and in shopping areas, or work at food stalls or solicit for sex. Street boys and girls are often sexually active from a young age, either for pleasure- or income-seeking reasons. This makes them a high-risk group vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS.

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