Prevalence,
Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children In the first decade
of the 21st Century gvnet.com/streetchildren/Mauritania.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 *** ECPAT Global
Monitoring Report on the status of action against commercial exploitation of
children - MAURITANIA [PDF] ECPAT International,
2007 www.ecpat.net/A4A_2005/PDF/AF/Global_Monitoring_Report-MAURITANIA.pdf [accessed 19 June
2011] www.ecpat.org/wp-content/uploads/legacy/Global_Monitoring_Report-MAURITANIA.pdf [accessed 24
December 2016] A number of studies
focusing on street children found that many are being exploited through
prostitution, including boys. According to a study by Father François Lefort, street children are targeted by unscrupulous
adults, often foreigners, who exploit them either as pimps or directly. In a
2003 report, he attested to having treated 103 children abused by seven
westerners. He also reported that, out of 400 children living without their
families in the streets of ***
ARCHIVES *** The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on
the Worst Forms of Child Labor www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/mauritania.htm [accessed 20
February 2011] INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Children perform a wide range of urban informal
activities, such as street work and domestic work, as well as work as
cashiers, dishwashers in restaurants, car washers, and apprentices in
garages. In addition, some children
living with marabouts, or Koranic teachers, are forced to beg, sometimes for
over 12 hours a day. In 2002, a WFP
survey of out-of-school children in Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61581.htm [accessed 10
February 2020] CHILDREN
-
Attendance was required at school for six years, but full implementation of
universal primary education was not scheduled to be completed until at least
2007, primarily because of lack of financial resources needed to provide
educational facilities and teachers throughout the country, especially in
remote areas. The 2002-03 official attendance rate was steady at 92 percent.
Education was free through university level. Classes were fully integrated,
including boys and girls from all social and ethnic groups. Children of slave
families were allowed to attend school. Local NGOs
estimated that there were up to 400 street
children, largely as a result of poverty and of the urbanization of
formerly nomadic families. The former government implemented a program to
assist families with street children
and to encourage their school attendance. Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, 12 October 2001 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/mauritania2001.html [accessed 20
February 2011] [45] While noting
the increase in the number of schools and classrooms, the Committee is
nevertheless concerned that only approximately 60 per cent of children attend
school and that there are great gender and regional disparities. It further
notes with concern the high drop-out and repeating rates; the inadequacy of
the school curriculum; the high teacher-pupil ratio, especially in the
capital, [49] The Committee
is concerned about the high number of children engaged in labor, in
particular children working in agriculture, in the informal sector and in the
street, including the talibés who are exploited by
their teachers. Why
are they in the Street? Réseau d’Échanges
Pour les Enfants des Rues (Network of Exchanges to
help Street Children) REPER, 4 March 2011 www.enfantsdesrues-reper.org/153-Why-are-they-in-the-street [accessed 19 June
2011] BROKEN FAMILIES - a child may have
been rejected by a stepfather or stepmother.
This is a very frequent problem.
In POLITICAL CAUSES - Children
separated from their families because of border closures. This is what happened in Committee
On Rights Of Child Starts Consideration Of Initial Report Of UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, 25 September 2001 www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/0/3B6FB806294E2AD0C1256AD200517583?opendocument [accessed 19 June 2011] Primary education
was obligatory from the age of 6 years and a law imposed penalties against
parents who failed to send their children to school. Orphans and street children were not
rejected within the Mauritanian society, the delegation said. Orphaned children were generally taken in
by the extended families and other institutions. Children could only become street children
following the erosion of the family and the African traditional system. Committee On The
Elimination Of Racial Discrimination - Consideration Of Reports Submitted By
States Parties Under Article 9 Of The Convention UN International
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination CERD, 26
October 1998 At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 19 June
2011] 141. This problem,
which is a recent one in Mauritanian society, is still very limited because
traditions of solidarity continue to exist and because certain services, such
as education and health, are provided free of charge. Another reason,
however, is that there are no declared cases of children born out of wedlock.
142. In order to
prevent the growth of this phenomenon, the social affairs sector has
established a program of monitoring, assisting and protecting children in
difficulties. The program has five components: locating street children at
night-time; providing them with shelter and lending them a sympathetic ear;
placing delinquent minors in rehabilitation centers; placing children whose
immediate reintegration in the family cannot be contemplated in open
children's homes; and social and vocational integration with the support of
the 143. This program
currently covers 800 children and adolescents and has enabled 23 per cent of
them to return to their families, 30 per cent to be educated in open-system
homes, 10 per cent to receive training in a trade and 37 per cent to be
educated under supervision in a closed environment. 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 - |
