Prevalence,
Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children In the first
decade of the 21st Century gvnet.com/streetchildren/Lebanon.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
and accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the
situation in 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 *** Street children
becoming a new problem on Deutsche Presse-Agentur (German Press Agency) DPA, [accessed 18 January
2017] Street children are
becoming a common sight in Zeina, with her green
eyes, taps on a car window wither dirty little hands, begging to sell her
chewing gum before nightfall. "So please buy one, I have to sell them
all in order to buy bread for my family," Zeina
pleads, with tears in her eyes. The
little blonde girl said she has mainly lived on the streets since she was
eight to help her family survive.
"I have been begging, selling roses, chewing gum, or washing
windows since I was eight," she said. "My father left us because my
mother got sick." ***
ARCHIVES *** The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on
the Worst Forms of Child Labor www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/lebanon.htm [accessed 17
February 2011] INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - It is common for children to earn family income by
working in the fields or begging in the streets. Non-Lebanese children constitute 10 to 20
percent of children working in the formal sector, but make up a larger share
of children working on the street. Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61693.htm [accessed 9 February
2020] SECTION
6 WORKER RIGHTS
– [d] In December 2004 the MOL completed a study on working street children, which provided a
snapshot of the condition and nature of street
children in the country. The report showed that the average street child was a boy (9 percent
were girls), foreign (only 15 percent were citizens, the others were most
often Palestinian and Syrian), 12 years of age, and poorly educated or
illiterate. Street children
were concentrated in large urban centers where approximately 47 percent of
them were forced to work long hours on the streets by adults. The most common
types of work were selling goods, including lottery tickets, shoe polishing,
and washing car windshields. The children earned between $2 and $15 (3
thousand to 25 thousand pounds) per day. Only 19 percent of the children
interviewed said they kept their income. LEBANON: Government
could do more to tackle child labour UN Integrated
Regional Information Networks IRIN, www.irinnews.org/report/73288/lebanon-government-could-do-more-to-tackle-child-labour [accessed 10 March
2015] Abdullah lives like
no eight year-old-boy should. Two years ago, the youngster from Raqqa, a town
in the north of Syria on the banks of the River Euphrates, travelled to
Lebanon with his three brothers, looking for work. Today, Abdullah lives with around 20 other
workers in a ramshackle encampment on a patch of wasteland in Lailaki, a poor suburb of south Beirut. By night, the boy picks through the city’s
rubbish, hoping to find objects of value.
By day, instead of going to school, Abdullah sorts through his
discoveries with his “boss”, an aggressive middle-aged woman who claims to
own the camp and who, Abdullah says, beats the children if they do not make
her enough money. A few hours sleep in
a filthy, cramped tent with no heat or running water and a bowl of rice is
his reward. Eter estimated Lebanon
has as many as 5,000 street children, 80 percent of them foreigners mainly
from Syria, Jordan, Iraq or the Palestinian territories, who carry no
identification papers and who therefore cannot attend state school and can be
arrested any time. UN Integrated
Regional Information Networks IRIN, www.irinnews.org/report/27096/lebanon-street-children-victims-of-organised-crime [accessed 10 March
2015] In Samir is only 12
years old, but living on the streets has made him grow up quickly.
Palestinian of origin, his story is a sad –but all too common – one. “I’ve
been begging since I was eight,” he said. “My mother left when I was five,
and now my father beats me and makes me beg for money.” Information about
Street Children - This report is taken
from “A Civil Society Forum for North Africa and the Middle East on Promoting
and Protecting the Rights of Street Children”, 3-6 March 2004, At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 13 June
2011] Most children on
the streets spend their days selling trinkets or begging for their
parents/other family members before returning home at night. However, there
is a small number for whom the street is their permanent residence, and these
are usually children who have suffered emotional and/or physical abuse within
their families due to poverty, overcrowding, or family disintegration. LEISWAD Home of
Hope Mennonite Central
Committee, Global Family Program stories, July 2005 At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 13 June
2011] Mohammed, 15, came
to Home of Hope about three years ago from the streets of the Rauche section of 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 - |
