Prevalence,
Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children In the first decade of the 21st Century gvnet.com/streetchildren/Tanzania.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 ARTICLES *** Tanzanian children
struggle with homelessness Andrew Rosten, The Daily Vidette, At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 28 July
2011] “[As a result of
urbanization], a lot of fathers are leaving the rural areas for the urban
areas to find work," Stewart said. "If they don't find work in
these places, they can't go back because of certain attitudes in terms of a
male's responsibility for his family, so they abandon their families and
leave mom in the villages with all these kids. She can't do it, so a lot of
these kids say, 'OK, mom can't take care of me, so I need to just go away.' ” Those budding
criminals! Gasirigwa Sengiyumva,
Daily News, 3rd June 2011 www.dailynews.co.tz/feature/?n=20406 [accessed 28 July
2011] hopelifetanzania.blogspot.com/2012_10_23_archive.html [accessed 8 January
2017] These children are in
most cases neglected by parents. They survive on rancid leftovers of food
often scooped out of garbage cans. They sleep in the dank alleys. Many blame
their "cruel" parents in particular and society in general for
their predicament. Some of the children
I spoke to recently sleep in abandoned kiosks and shacks. In coastal cities
and towns street children sleep in junked boats, abandoned homes,
semi-finished houses and dilapidated vehicles, canopies of trees or on the
open beach. Many do not trust anyone.
They are security sensitive and always carry knives for self-defence.
In some cases, it is these needy children who engage in criminal activities
for reasons of sheer survival. Some of
these delinquents may have been brought up by parents who have no respect for
the rule of law or who are criminals themselves. ***
ARCHIVES *** The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on
the Worst Forms of Child Labor www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/tanzania.htm [accessed 28
December 2010] INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - In the informal sector,
children are engaged in scavenging, fishing, fish processing, and
quarrying. Other children work as
barmaids, street vendors, car washers, shoe shiners, cart pushers,
carpenters, auto repair mechanics, and in garages. In 2001, 56.9 percent of children aged 5 to
17 years attended school. Human Rights Reports
» 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61596.htm [accessed 11
February 2020] CHILDREN
-
UNICEF estimated there were two million child orphans, most of them orphaned
by AIDS. There were significant numbers of street children in both Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, 8 June 2001 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/tanzania2001.html [accessed 28
December 2010] [36] The Committee is
concerned about the incidence of police brutality, particularly against
children living and/or working on the streets, refugee children and those in
conflict with the law. Concern is also expressed at the inadequate
enforcement of existing legislation to ensure that all children are treated
with respect for their physical and mental integrity and their inherent
dignity. [60] The Committee
notes that the State party joined the ILO International Program on the
Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC) in 1994 and subsequently committed itself
to a time-bound program to eliminate the worst forms of child labor, starting
in mid-2001. However, in light of the current economic situation, the
increasing number of school drop-outs and the increasing number of children living
and/or working on the streets, the Committee is concerned about the large
number of children engaged in labor and the lack of information and adequate
data on the situation of child labor and economic exploitation within the
State party. No solution in
sight yet to salvage street children The Observer,
2009/01/11 kurayangu.com/ipp/observer/2009/01/11/129482.html [Last access date
unavailable] Driving his Coaster
commuter bus on the 15-kilometre journey from Mwenge
to Kariakoo, Rashid Juma is
always confronted by little girls and boys who beg for money at the Fire Bus
Stop in Time bomb that must
be defused Daily News dailynews.habarileo.co.tz/analysis/index.php?id=7617 [Last access date
unavailable] The fast-increase
in the number of street children in almost all major and small urban areas in
the country, with There are several
causes for the increase as advanced by researchers, the most hyped about
being children who are left with no families after their parents died of
HIV/AIDS. Other causes mentioned are family poverty, mistreatment by
irresponsible parents or guardians and rebellious behaviour
among some children for one reason or another. Some lazy parents who think that begging is the only way of earning
a living, take their children with them to the streets and introduce them to the
world of begging, a very sad case of beggar-begetting-beggar. To the poor
children, this is the world they would learn to know for the rest of their
lives if no intervention will be forthcoming along the way. Experience and
research has shown that some of the street children, bitter with the way the
world has treated them, graduate into hardcore criminals on reaching
adulthood or even much earlier. Who is to blame for this undesirable state of
affairs other than the larger society in which the displaced children live? Revealed: The dark
side of Reinier Carabain,
Sunday Observer, mwanzanewsblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/revealed-dark-side-of-mwanza-street.html [partially accessed
28 July 2011] One of the African
countries, which have witnessed a tremendous increase in unsupervised
children either living alone or working on urban streets, is Urban street
children are seen as a problem which further compounds the nature of an urban
crisis. Tanzanian politicians, policy-makers and urban planners seem to be
helpless in their efforts to either solve the problem or to assist street
children and have failed to prescribe plausible concrete solutions. In fact, the official government attitude
towards street children has been very negative. Street children are
considered to be hooligans, vagabonds and prone to commit crimes. As a result of this, they have been target
of harassment by law enforcement organisations;
there are many cases of street children being beaten by police, detained and
sometimes repatriated to their rural homes.
Nevertheless, these draconian measures have not provided long-term
solutions to this social problem. The
number of urban street children has continued to escalate every year. – sccp Aids 'ravaging
street children' Cosmas Makalla, The Citizen ( allafrica.com/stories/200809010734.html [partially accessed
28 July 2011 - access restricted] Available figures
indicate that currently there are 411 street children in the two region's
cities compared to 301 the previous year.
A study conducted in 2006 shows that the number is increasing at the
rate of 26 per cent per year. Most of
the street children in Arusha are boys while in Moshi the majority
are girls. More than 90 per cent are aged over 15 years in Arusha
while in Moshi the same age group accounts for 50 per cent of the street
kids. The Centre says most children
end up in the street due to poverty, alcoholism, divorces and related family
disputes. Others prefer the streets to being forced to work on farms by their
parents to supplement family incomes.
Once on the streets, the majority of them engage in risky behaviour that exposes them to HIV/Aids. Mkombozi spearheads child
protection Daily News dailynews.habarileo.co.tz/magazine/index.php?id=6644 [Last access date
unavailable] Street children in
Arusha and Moshi municipalities can now access free medical treatment and
health care, thanks to an initiative of an organisation
working on their behalf. According to
Anna Thor of Mkombozi center for street children,
street children in the two municipalities are issued with a special “sick
sheet” which they need only to present to a hospital or clinic in order to
receive treatment. The health centre will then be reimbursed by the organisation. Ms
Thor says that her organisation tries to capture
local potential through learning and reflection and acts as a catalyst for
children's holistic development She says in a
recent report released recently that the number has gone up by 67 per cent in
five years since the last census in 2003. Verbal, physical and sexual abuses
are often mentioned as the reasons for children to leave for the streets.
Once there they face more violence and abuse in a constant struggle to access
food, safety and opportunities to disengage with street life. There is no
practical state support for these children.
Through its outreach programme, Mkombozi supports children outreach programmes
in Arusha and it is looking forward to provide mobile unit that will enable
more children to be reached and a more comprehensive array of services to be
offered on the street. MIND THAT CHILD :
Spare a thought for young scavengers Daily News, Jul 04,
2008 www.camon-line.org/new/news.php [accessed 28 July
2011] Some of the
children were in the company of a parent or, in few cases, both parents. I
was amazed. Indeed, I found it a sorry spectacle. Families living in grinding
poverty think they have no dignity to defend. So, to them, scavenging is a
small, acceptable matter. In most
cases it is the same street children that we see eating from garbage cans
that visit dumpsites. Young beggars and other socially disadvantaged children
also scavenge. The habit is so compelling that the dumps are sometimes
swarming with scavengers. The most
notorious scavengers are found in the city of Dar es
Salaam where dumpsites are almost always overflowing with refuse shunted in
from various sources including the port, hospitals, factories, garages and
homes. Scavenging children make their
living by picking up and selling used paper, plastic, bottles, metal pieces,
tins, rags, clothes and other objects from street garbage or dumpsites. Adult
scavengers do exactly the same thing. Growing army destitutes alarming, House told Daily News, July 03,
2008 This article has
been archived by World Street Children News and may possibly still be
accessible [here] [accessed 28 July
2011] Over half of the
parents residing along Gordon's work to
live on in trust www.sunderlandecho.com/news/local/gordon_s_work_to_live_on_in_trust_1_1148025 [accessed 28 July
2011] A new Wearside
charity is to bring fresh hope to poverty-stricken street children in "The poverty
over there is unimaginable. One of the families who were considered
'comfortable' had three of four children sleeping in one bed, a charcoal fire
in a basic hut." "Children over
there often come down from the country and villages to try to get work.
You'll often see little kids breaking rocks by the side of the road. It's
absolutely heartbreaking." Street boy soldiers
on Peter Mwangu, Sunday Observer, 8 July 2007 At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 28 July
2011] It may sound
fictitious but it`s real: Nicholaus Issa is three-people-in-one. From sunrise to noon, he is
a student and then converts to part-beggar and part-odd jobs operative in the
streets up to late evening. The
``third person`` rounds off the day when he retires for the night, not in the
conventional sense of sleeping under a roof, but in the open. 15-year-old Nicholaus
is a street child, who shares the degrading label with several other boys and
girls in Dar es Salaam and other Tanzanian urban centres. The only
difference for him, which makes him luckier than several of his core
community-mates, is that education is one of the components of his life while
that of others is confined to two, and both negative. Council Embarks On
Exercise to Round Up Beggars and Street Kids Innocent Kisanga, Arusha Times (Arusha), April 14, 2007 [accessed 8 January
2017] According to the
Arusha municipality public relations officer, Elias Malima,
this exercise is done repeatedly to make sure the streets remain clear
without beggars or street kids who disturb pedestrians and motorists by
asking them money. In December last year
more than 300 beggars were sent back to their home villages but up to mid
January this year most of them were back in Arusha and begging as usual with
glee and relish. Mind That Child:
Save a prayer for child scavengers Daily News, Jul 04,
2008 www.camon-line.org/new/news.php [accessed 28 July
2011] [scroll down] Some of these
highly vulnerable and socially disadvantaged were in the company of a parent
or, in some cases, both parents. This was a sorry spectacle indeed. I was amazed.
Families living in grinding poverty often think they have no dignity to
defend. So, to them, scavenging is a small, compelling matter. In most cases,
it is the same street children that we see eating from garbage cans that
visit dumpsites. Young beggars and other socially disadvantaged children also
scavenge. The habit is so
compelling that the dumps, especially those in Dar es
Salaam, sometimes swarm with scavengers. It is a pity that some people make
scavenging a life-long undertaking. Marunde Mboni (47), a resident of Dodoma, has scavenged in the
municipality for nearly 40 years. Scavenging children make their living by
picking up and selling used paper, plastic, bottles, metal pieces, tins,
rags, clothes and other objects from street garbage or dumpsites. Former journalism
student reflects on Victor Lugala, Daily News, January 20, 2007 At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 28 July
2011] Not far from the
dance halls, there was a negative street phenomenon that has overtaken Mwanza
and authorities seem not to care, although they notice. As early as 10 pm you
can see a group of girls standing under lamp posts. Some of these girls are
probably as young as ten years old, dressed like young adults in tight
trousers while others are skimpily dressed in cheap mitumba
(second-hand clothes). When a car
approaches they gesture to catch the attention of the motorist. These are the
child prostitutes of Mwanza. Some of these are said to be homeless children
or street children, if you like. During the day,
they are seen as street children, and at night they moonlight as commercial
sex workers serving pedophiles. In their nocturnal exploits these young flesh
hawkers are bound to be exposed to cruelty, abuse and infection with sexually
transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS. Those young
criminals! Sosthenes Mwita,
Daily News, 3 September 2010 www.dailynews.co.tz/columnist/?n=12870&cat=columnist [accessed 28 July
2011] It has been
determined that some homeless children share the mean streets with adult
underworld criminals -- thieves, drug peddlers, and others. These adults get
into contact with street children easily. They, indeed, exploit them for
criminal ends. Sometimes the children wind up in prisons. Thieves often send
street children on errands. The children are instructed to steal mobile phones,
handbags and gold chains from pedestrians. The young thieves are paid small
sums of money in return but in the process they risk being caught and
battered to death by rowdy mobs. Street children are
also used to push narcotic drugs for adult criminals. Children are invariably
deemed to be innocent young souls who cannot afford to buy and sell expensive
narcotic drugs. So drug barons often exploit this notion to the fullest. Former Tanzania
street child Sospeter Okoth,
04 January 2007 streetchildrennews.wordpress.com/2007/01/04/tanzania-street-kids-norfolk-joy/ [accessed 8 January
2017] By the time he was
nine, both of his parents had died from Aids, and Sospeter
was forced to fend for himself, begging for scraps as he made his away across
the fourth poorest nation in the world in search of an education. That was until he came to the notice of
Norfolk-based charity Street Child Rescue Tanzania, whose founder Vicky
Robertson paid for a secondary-school education in which he has so far
excelled. Now 21, Sospeter
is about to start his A-levels in Tanzania, runs a boarding house for the
charity where he looks after 10 former street children, and finds time to
play football for a team in the equivalent of the English Championship. ' Nelden Djakababa,
The www.thejakartapost.com/news/2006/12/12/039darwin039s-nightmare039-mwanza039s-reality.html [accessed 28 July
2011] We are then shown a
glimpse of the lives of But more disturbing
is the fact that most of them have to live on the streets because their
parents have died of AIDS. The fishermen's sheer poverty has inadvertently
contributed to the quick spread of the disease. In a particular
fishermen's community with a population of around 300, some 45 to 50
individuals have died due to the virus within the last six months. We see a
religious leader who says that he does not encourage his flock to wear condoms
"because it is sinful." UNH
Anthropologist on Tanzanian Tracy Manforte, www.unh.edu/news/news_releases/1999/november/tm_19991122lugalla.html [accessed 28 July
2011] The region is
destitute and the government has done little to assist children who have been
abandoned due to poverty or who have lost parents due to disease. In Dar-Es-Salaam, the east coast capital of
Poverty, HIV and
barriers to education: street children's experiences in Tanzania R. Evans, Gender and
Development Vol. 10, No. 3, November 2002 At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 28 July
2011] Within
the context of national levels of poverty, ‘cost-sharing’ in health and
education sectors, and the AIDS epidemic, poor families in Tanzania are under
considerable pressure, and increasing numbers of girls and boys are
consequently seeking a living independently on the streets of towns and
cities. Information about
Street Children - This report is taken
from “A Civil Society Forum for East and Southern Africa on Promoting and
Protecting the Rights of Street Children”, 11- 13 February 2002, At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 28 July
2011] Background:
Children under 15 constitute about 46% of the population. The urban
population is estimated at about 26%. There has been an increase in street
children numbers since the early 1990s due to the impact of poverty on
households and the effect of HIV/AIDS. In a 2000 survey by Mkombozi, 22% of children migrating to the streets was the result of school exclusion linked to inability to
pay school fees. At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 28 July
2011] Increasing poverty
and migration from the countryside to towns are the reasons for the
disbandment of traditional family structures followed by a loss of support to
children from the extended family. Street children are left alone,
undernourished and under constant pressure to find food and a place to sleep.
Theft, robbery and prostitution are their daily strategies of survival. Strengthening
communities producing street children in the Kilimanjaro Region ChildHope At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 28 July
2011] A mere 38% of
children complete their 7 years of compulsory basic education, while children
with disabilities are excluded from the education system altogether because
of stigma towards them in the community and in school. Amani Children's
Home Amani Children’s
Home [accessed 28 July
2011] Since its founding
by local Tanzanians in 2001, Amani Children's Home has rescued over 150
children from the perils of life on the streets, where children face a high
risk of HIV transmission and malnutrition. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
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ARTICLES. Cite this webpage as: Patt,
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