Prevalence,
Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children In the first decade of the 21st
Century gvnet.com/streetchildren/Botwwana.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
and accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the
situation in Botswana. Some of these
links may lead to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated
or even false. No attempt has been made to validate their authenticity
or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking for
material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on this
page and others to see which aspect(s) of street life are of particular
interest to you. You might be
interested in exploring how children got there, how they survive, and how
some manage to leave the street.
Perhaps your paper could focus on how some street children abuse the
public and how they are abused by the public … and how they abuse each
other. Would you like to write about
market children? homeless children? Sexual and labor exploitation? begging? violence? addiction? hunger? neglect? etc. There is a lot to the subject of Street
Children. Scan other countries as well
as this one. Draw comparisons between
activity in adjacent countries and/or regions. Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. Teachers Check out some of
the Resources
for Teachers attached to this website. ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** Independent Final
Evaluation of the Reducing Exploitive Child Labor in Southern Africa
(RECLISA) Project: Botswana Country Report American Institutes for
Research, Cooperative Agreement Number: E-9-K-4-0046 -- 2008 www.dol.gov/ilab/projects/summaries/SouthernAfr_RECLISA_Botswana_feval.pdf [accessed 22
November 2016] The early planning
documents show that RECLISA was to prevent at-risk children in Botswana
from entering into
child labor by
enrolling them and facilitating their
attendance in formal education. Material
barriers to attendance
would be addressed
by either facilitating access
to existing government
services or supplementing those
services when necessary.
The program
would also increase public and government awareness of children’s rights and
the prevalence of child labor. Children in the program would be provided with
psychosocial support to nurture the set
of life skills
necessary to attain
improved outcomes for
their lives. There
would also be
a vocational training
component to equip
the older children
with skills to
become employable or
economically self-sufficient. The vulnerable groups
specifically identified as
beneficiaries were street children and children in rural areas
where child labor was thought to be most prevalent. ***
ARCHIVES *** The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on
the Worst Forms of Child Labor www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/botswana.htm [accessed 25
February 2011] INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - The ILO estimated that 13.5 percent of children ages
10 to 14 years in Human Rights
Reports » 2008 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/af/118987.htm [accessed 7 February
2020] CHILDREN
-
Education was not compulsory. The government reintroduced school fees in
2006. The fees could be waived for children whose family income fell below a
certain amount. The government also provided uniforms, books, and other fees
for students whose parents were destitute. Students in remote areas received
two free meals a day at school. According to 2004 government statistics,
approximately 88 percent of children attended school, and an estimated 30
percent of children completed secondary school. Girls and boys attended
school at similar rates. School attendance and completion rates were highest
in urban areas, where transportation was readily available, and lowest in rural
areas, where children often lived far from schools and often assisted their
families as cattle tenders, domestic laborers, and child care providers. Boys and girls younger than 15 received
free and equal access to government healthcare centers. TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS
– The government worked with NGOs to assist potential trafficking victims by
hosting workshops on trafficking issues and by making grants to shelters that
provided short- and long-term care for children who lived on the streets SECTION
6 WORKER RIGHTS
– [d] According to the 2005-06 labor survey, slightly fewer than 38,000
children between the ages of seven and 17 were employed in the formal sector
in 2006. Approximately half of those employed were younger than 14. More than
60 percent of employed children worked in agriculture, 20 percent in retail
trade, and 4 percent in private homes. Children also worked as domestic
laborers, prostitutes, and in informal bars. Outside of supermarkets they
sometimes assisted truck drivers with unloading goods and carried bags for
customers. Many orphans also left school to work as caregivers for sick
relatives. Most employed children worked up to 28 hours per week. Committee On Rights
Of Child Concludes Thirty-Seventh Session UN Information
Service UNIS, www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2004/hr4796.doc [accessed 7 April
2011] The Committee
reaffirmed the fact that the various ages defined in the current legislation
were not in conformity with the Convention and recommended that the State party
expedite the necessary legislative reform in order to establish a definition
of the child in conformity with the Convention. The Committee was also
concerned that societal discrimination persisted against vulnerable groups of
children, including children with disabilities, street and rural children,
children born out of wedlock, orphans and fostered children and children
affected or infected by HIV/AIDS. The Committee was deeply concerned at
the situation of girls, in particular adolescent girls who, as acknowledged
by the State party, suffered marginalization and gender stereotyping which
compromised their educational opportunities and made them more vulnerable to
sexual violence, abuse and HIV/AIDS. The Protection
Project - The www.protectionproject.org/human_rights_reports/report_documents/botswana.doc [accessed 2009] FACTORS THAT
CONTRIBUTE TO THE TRAFFICKING INFRASTRUCTURE - In DO Re-Unites With
Her 'Children' Kagiso Sekokonyane,
Staff Writer, Mmegi/The Reporter ( www.mmegi.bw/2006/August/Monday21/239449322196.html [accessed 7 April
2011] The problems of the
street children are many and varied though they are more or less similar.
When she sat down with some of them to inquire why they left their homes,
they told her that their parents did not treat them well. "One of these
boys told me that he decided to leave his home because his parents were
always fighting," she explained. Chandapiwa Baputaki,
Mmegi/The Reporter ( This article has
been archived by World Street Children News and may possibly still be
accessible [here] [accessed 21
September 2011] They go around with
empty cartons of milk sniffing glue and staring at passers-by with glassy
eyes. They do not seem to care and they look like a bunch of men who have
lost the plot some way in their lives. No one seems to care about their
welfare or where they get their next meal or where they will spend the night
on a given day. Their beds are any corner where they will be when they start
dozing and their meal is from any dustbin near any restaurant or supermarket.
The streets have become their homes and they are fondly called bo-bashi. He said that bobashi do not end up on the streets out of choice. He
explained that they are forced by their traumatic childhoods that they are
exposed to by their parents. He gave an example of a five-year-old who was brought
to their station on January 23 after being left in front of Edu-tech College
near Gaborone Main Mall. He said when questioning the little girl she
revealed that her mother left her and boarded a combi. Authorities in 22 May, 2000 This article has
been archived by World Street Children News and may possibly still be
accessible [here] [accessed 21
September 2011] Health authorities
warned that glue sniffing was dangerous to health as this could damage the
nervous system Interviewed by BOPA, the Francistown City Council’s Chief
Community Development Officer, Polelelo
Motshwaedi said the street children numbering more
than 15 were a headache to the authorities.
Ms Motshwaedi said that they were once taken back to their
respective schools but returned to the streets to make money through washing
cars and doing other odd jobs. Some of them have
become beggars. She said some people once volunteered to assist them but the
children were not interested to learn or to be engaged in skills that would
bring them long term benefits. Street Children,
Children of Farm Workers, and Children at Risk in American Institutes
for Research AIR At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 21
September 2011] Working though the
Botswana National Youth Council and SOS Children’s Villages, AIR’s
implementing partners for Reducing Exploitive
Child Labour in www.reclisa.org/content/index.cfm?navID=2&itemID=14
[Last access date
unavailable] A 2002 study of
Botswana’s street children found that the vast majority of those surveyed
were male (94%), with a mean age of 14. 85% had either no formal schooling or
incomplete primary education, even though Botswana offers free education up
to secondary school level. 83% said that they did not complete school because
their parents could not afford it. The most common form of labour performed
(76%) was carrying groceries or washing cars. Most street
children in Consortium for
Street Children – Consortium for
Street Children ( cfsc.trunky.net/content.asp?pageID=29®ionID=4&countryID=31 [accessed 7 April
2011] The age expectancy
in Street Children In Eugene K. CAMPBELL
and Tidimani NTSABANE, University of This article has
been archived by World Street Children News and may possibly still be
accessible [here] [accessed 21
September 2011] SUMMARY OF FINDINGS v that the children do not
live with adults, but instead live in and among a community of children. v that these children
either work for themselves or for each other in order to find sustenance and
pleasure. v that the children are
driven primarily by economic needs. v that they do maintain
some form of contact with their families. v the children begin
their life on the street by a gradual process. Rather than arriving on the
streets abruptly, they leave home in a measured manner, at first staying for
a night or two, then gradually spending more time away from home. v that the children and
their parents/guardians have little or no education. The parents are employed
with no regular sources of income. The job prospects for both children and
parents do not hold much promise, given their levels of training. v both the parents and
children may differ in terms of the causes of the phenomenon of street
children. But they agree that there does not seem to be any future in
pursuing their present circumstances. Qualitative
research report on orphans and vulnerable children in Palapye,
Botswana Author: G.N. Tsheko -- Publisher: Human Sciences Research www.eldis.org/go/topics&id=31093&type=Document#.UgPePKyS_Bw [accessed 8 Aug 2013] Author: G.N. Tsheko Publisher: Human
Sciences Research Council, South Africa, 2007 Through a snapshot
view drawn from interviews and focus groups in the town of Palapye, this book examines the situation of orphans and
vulnerable children (OVC) in Botswana. SUGGESTIONS FROM
RESPONDENTS INCLUDED THE NEED FOR: … government support for NGOs to establish
orphanages or community care centres for OVC,
especially street children, to ensure that they receive adequate care and are
not forced to either accept abuse at home or become street children. Social Problems in Edited by Apollo Rwomire, ISBN 0-275-96343-8 Praeger Publishers,
2001 Often unemployed
and poor, the mother or grandmother becomes overwhelmed by the burden of
raising the children unassisted. For their part, the children, upon realizing
that they cannot receive minimal support from home, decide to drift to towns
to fend for themselves, hence the growing number of street children, the bobashi. Today, in the context of Botswana, they number
in the thousands. There is an
estimated more than 1,000 children like Moses in the streets of Botswana.
They can be seen at many a car park, alone or in groups, begging, pilfering, pick-pocketing or shop lifting to survive. At night they
sleep in gutters, dustbins, doorways, parks, scrap yards, deserted buildings
or anywhere they can lay their heads on. Many suffer from
bronchitis or venereal diseases, and show the mental effects of dagga, glue,
petrol and any other substance they can get hold of to escape their constant
misery. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this webpage as: Patt,
Prof. Martin, "Street Children - |
