World Street Children News

LWF - News - Argentina: Order to Arrest Street Children Postponed Following Church’s Protests:

Complaints of Abuse in Police Custody

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina/GENEVA, 25 October 2001 (LWI) - An order on police to routinely round up street children and beggars in Buenos Aires Province has been suspended following protests by the United Evangelical Lutheran Church (UELC) and other sections of civil society in Argentina.

Provincial Security Minister, Ram�n Ver�n, has put on hold the directive issued by the provincial police chief for coordination and operations last August. The police force had been instructed to carry out special operations and “bring before the juvenile courts any children and young people found unprotected and/or begging on the public highways.” Spokespersons for non-governmental organizations point out that the order has been “suspended” not revoked.

In a September letter to Ver�n and Buenos Aires Provincial Governor, Carlos Ruckauf, the UELC said it considered the order in question as “a mistaken interpretation” of the Supreme Court decision whereby the Protection of Minors Act was declared unconstitutional.

The church said it was shocked to see the provincial police take repressive action in a social situation already fraught with anguish. This year the Buenos Aires Supreme Court had recorded 800 complaints from minors citing ill-treatment when in police custody. Complaints also are received through human rights’ organizations.

The UELC letter said the police “as an institution had broken down” particularly in dealing with issues concerning minors. The overcrowded conditions in which detainees are held in police stations meant that “minors are in contact with hardened criminals whose records and mental problems show them to be dangerous.”

The letter signed by UELC President Rev. Angel Furl�n warned that the action on street children and beggars is a violation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Argentina ratified in 1994. The church called for the police order to be lifted.

The letter further stated that the measure effectively implies that it is a crime to be poor, and complicates the already bleak picture of poverty in the country especially in Buenos Aires Province where there are an estimated 400,000 families living in poverty.

The UELC requested the Buenos Aires provincial administration to commit itself to working with civil society on the implementation of appropriate measures to deal with such families and their children. "

Title: The Majority of the Children in Sri Lanka Are Starving

- 500,000 children are oppressed by the war.
- 1.8 million children are malnourished.
- 200,000 children are disabled.
- 60,000 children do not go to school.
- 15,000 street children exist.
- No survey has been done on the state of children since 1991.
- Sri Lanka signed the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1991, but still Sri Lanka does not have a steering committee to put the requirements of the convention into practice.
- By the year 2000, 991 schools had been closed.

Surveys conducted by governmental and non-govenmental organisations (NGOs) have shown that more than half the population of children in Sri Lanka have become serious victims of the war or of malnutrition or have disabilities or have dropped out of school or are living on the streets. Out of a total population of 5.55 million children, 3.04 million children suffer from the problems above. The number of children directly oppressed by the war in the North and East of the country is about 500,000. These survey reports show that there are more than 1.8 million children affected by malnutrition throughout the country. Furthermore, there are about 222,000 disabled children in the country. There are also about 60,000 children of school-going age who do not attend school, and about 15,000 children live on the streets.

Although the situation is this bad, the government has not conducted any survey on the situation of children affected by the war after a similar survey was conducted by the Ministry of Plan Implementation. The commissioner of probation and child security, Ashoka Peiris, however, has shown that one child out of every 11 children in Sri Lanka suffers from these conditions.

Throughout the country, 60,000 children do not attend school; and according to the reports of the Department of Education, 991 schools had been closed by the end of the year 2000. Out of these schools, 187 schools were located in the Northern and Eastern provinces. Most of them are being used as refugee camps. Furthermore, an additional 50 percent to 60 percent of the school children in the Northern and Eastern provinces are said to have been recruited by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for their armed forces. Although 4 percent of the child population in Sri Lanka is disabled, only 1.5 percent of them are assisted by the government and NGOs. Although the Sri Lankan government signed the CRC in 1991, not even a national committee for implementation of this convention has not been set up after 10 years.

According to this convention, the secretary of the Social Services Ministry becomes the ex-officio president of this committee, and the activities of this committee have to expand throughout the country in order to reach the divisional secretariat divisions. As a result of this requirement, legal provisions do not exist to sufficiently protect children in the country. Even when a child is raped, it is simply considered a case of rape against a woman.

Posted on 2001-10-16
Asian Human Rights Commission

Lost and Found

Children Orphaned by AIDS are Finding a Home in the Pagoda

By Michelle Vachon
The Cambodia Daily

Their grandparents were victims of war and genocide; their parents either grew up under foreign occupation or in refugee camps along the Thai border. And now, many Cambodian children have their own tragedy to deal with–the AIDS epidemic. They are left orphans when their parents died of AIDS, and face the danger of being infected themselves and living very short lives. Sometimes relatives take care of them, but in many cases relatives cannot afford more children to feed. Families that adopt them often treat them differently than their own children, putting them to work in the fields or guarding cows, said Prang Chanthy of Impact Cambodia, an AIDS prevention program funded by USAid and managed by Family Health International.

Venerable Muny Vansaveth heads Wat Norea in Battambang, the only pagada in Cambodia that runs a shleter program for AIDS orphans.

But even when children are treated well by relatives, they have so much to deal with— the grief of losing parents and having to adapt to a new household—that some run away, she said.

As a result, the number of street children has increased throughout the country. At the present time, there is no precise figure on how many AIDS orphans are on the streets. However, it is known that as of 1998, a minimum of 30,000 children under 15 years old had lost their parents due to AIDS, said Prang Chanthy. 

These children are vulnerable to being sold into prostitution, she said. This puts them at risk of HIV/AIDS infection themselves. (An HIV infection does not lead to AIDS and death in all people, but HIV-positive people can infect others through unprotected sex.)

A number of organizations have set up programs to help AIDS orphans. In Battambang, two of them are trying to do what they can with little money but creative approaches. 

“One monk can feed seven children,” said Venerable Muny Vansaveth. When he started caring for abandoned children in 1992, he alone was begging for food to feed those seven kids. Now there are 27 monks at Wat Norea and 66 boys and girls, 46 of whom are AIDS orphans.

“We try so hard,” said Muny Vansaveth. “For 10 years, it was very difficult—we had no funds. We wanted to protect them from being sold to prostitution.”

He succeeded. With the help of several organizations and private donations from people living abroad, Wat Norea Peaceful Children’s Home has cared for 358 children through the years.

This is a safe haven for children, with 30 to 40 nuns to help them in addition to the monks. Children can stay as long as they need.

Min Saory, 16 , was brought to home by her aunt after her parents died seven years ago. The aunt did not explain why she was bringing her to the pagoda, and no relative from her village of Phum Sran Kpoh in Kompong Chhnang province has come to visit Min Saory.

“My aunt is very poor, so I did not go to school in the village,” Min Saory said. At the pagoda, children go to public school half-days and attend classes at Wat Norea the rest of the time. Subjects include Thai, English and Japanese. “We want to give them a very good education,” said Muny Vansaveth. Children follow the monks’ regimen of discipline and prayers, with time for games as well.

The monks also spread AIDS education in villages and minister to AIDS victims. When villagers see monks go to the houses of people with AIDS, it makes them realize the disease is not contagious, and this helps reduce discrimination against them, said Muny Vansaveth.

Wat Norea is the only pagoda in Cambodia known to have an AIDS orphan program. Monks from other parts of the country have started coming to the pagoda to learn how to do this with little or no money, said Muny Vansaveth. 

 

Meatho Phum Komah (Children’s Homeland) was borne out of Mao Lang’s determination not to let children down when one source of funding died and overnight she had to find a home for 16 kids.

This was in 1996. Five years and countless letters later, Homeland has secured funding from a number of organizations. However, it remains a shoestring operation and Mao Lang is constantly in a fundraising mode.

Homeland serves as a safe house for children, but a temporary one whose goal is to reunite them with their families or to find a place for them within a year if possible.

During a recent visit, Homeland had 409 children under its care—street children, AIDS orphans, kids returning after being sold to work in Thailand.

Children have to agree to discipline, to handle their share of chores and to go to school in order to live at the center; they are free to leave at any time.

Homeland workers send children back to their families only after investigation. Mao Lang refuses to let the older sister of 13-year-old Try Raksmei take her back home; she believes Try Raksmei’s sister will sell her again to the broker who took her to Thailand to work. Try Raksmei has been at the center one year.

In the case of 8-year-old Udum Veasna, Mao Lang has tried to get the child’s father to help support his illegitimate son. Udum Veasna’s mother is sick with AIDS, and her sister dropped off Udum Veasna at the center a few months ago.

Homeland also hopes to create a network of foster homes for AIDS orphans. Mao Lang has so far paid for their care out of her budget, but she plans to develop a network of individuals who would agree to contribute approximately $20 per month to support a child. Prospective foster families would be taught about AIDS to alleviate their fears of contagion.