World Street Children News :: Egypt Streetkid News

For girls like Hadir there are few helping hands in Cairo

Cradling her baby, Ahmed, in her arms, Hadir looks at ease with the world.

But her joy masks a very different kind of reality.

Only a few months ago, 16-year-old Hadir, on the run from problems with her family, was preparing to give birth on the crowded and unforgiving streets of Cairo.

Alone, scared and vulnerable, she was at the mercy of a world filled with violence, drugs and sexual abuse.

Just as all seemed lost, Hadir found sanctuary in a new rehabilitation centre for street mothers, operated by Hope Village Society, a group dedicated to the care and welfare of some of Egypt’s most vulnerable children.

Several months later, her baby was safely delivered.

"I don’t know what I would have done if there hadn’t been this centre," she says. "The staff were so helpful before and during my delivery."

Health problems

Sadly, Hadir’s story is a familiar one.

Cairo is an ancient and teeming city of 16m people

Estimates show that poverty and family break-up mean anywhere between 200,000 and a million Egyptian youngsters have to fend for themselves on the streets of the country’s major cities.

Their numbers are thought to be rising fast. Society tends to take an uncharitable view of these vulnerable youngsters.

Many Egyptians regard street children as a nuisance, or at worst as petty criminals fully meriting the harsh treatment to which they are often subjected.

Their health problems are often severe, ranging from cholera to tuberculosis and anaemia.

Studies show they are exposed to a variety of toxic substances, both in their food and in the environment around them.

They are also at risk of various kinds of abuse.

In one survey, 86% of street children questioned identified violence as a major problem in their life, while 50% stated that they had been exposed to sexual molestation.

Parallel world

Up to one million children fend for themselves on the streets of major cities

In addition to operating the street mothers’ centre, Hope Village runs a number of drop-in centres across Cairo, where children can come for medical attention, showers and food, before returning to the streets to sleep.

Four long-stay shelters in the city offer children a more permanent home.

Street children live in a separate world, one with its own set of rules.

Many mingle with the public quite unobtrusively, wandering aimlessly across the capital’s chaotic, sun-beaten highways, and through the countless dirt-covered lanes and alleyways, as they search for food and, perhaps, a safer place to rest their heads as night approaches.

They may wash cars, sell tissue boxes or beg for money. Others lie where they had fallen the night before.

Fresh start

Asleep under a bridge, in a doorway or on a grass verge in the centre of Cairo itself, their slumber is often drug-induced - glue, solvents and cannabis being the substances most used.

Here, in Egypt’s capital, a sprawling mass of some 16m human beings, people do not stop and stare.

Street children are not a surprising phenomenon. They are a part of Cairo, a part of Egypt, a part of life.

For girls like Hadir, however, there is a chance for a fresh start. Set up with funding raised by Unicef Germany goodwill ambassador Ann-Kathrin Linsenhoff, the street mothers’ centre is the first of its kind in Egypt.

Its aim is to provide young mothers and their babies with the secure surroundings they need in which to put their fractured lives back together.

Medical care, provided by a resident nurse and various visiting doctors, is an essential part of the centre.

So too, is the help given to young mothers to work out problems with the authorities.

Training

Obtaining birth certificates for their children is one such task, though this is complicated by the fact that the child’s father is usually absent.

The young women are expected to leave the centre by the time they reach the age of 21.

By then, having attended literacy and child-rearing classes, and some vocational training sessions, they will hopefully be able to face the future with confidence.

Everything is geared towards making the young mothers self-reliant and responsible, the group says.

"A vital part of the project consists of helping the girls reintegrate into mainstream society by finding them jobs, housing, reuniting them with their families, or helping them set up a small income-generating project," says Unicef protection officer Nadra Zaki.

"While they’re here, the girls can learn new skills like hairdressing, carpet weaving and candle making.

"The idea is that when they leave they can earn an income, and support their children, and avoid ever having to go back onto the street."

A new approach to Egypt’s street children

CAIRO, Egypt - Among the swirling crowds of Cairo, one hardly notices the small figures of children who call the streets their home. Adel is one of them. He left home at nine to escape a life of misery and violence.
"My father would beat me every day after he returned from work, even though I was doing everything around the house,” says Adel. “He always came home in a bad mood and would hit me with anything that came to hand. In the end, I couldn’t take it anymore.”

But the life he found on the streets was no better, Adel admits. Now after four years of a rootless, vulnerable existence, he longs to return home. “When I see other children on their way to school, I wish I could be like them. Here on the streets, I have no future,” Adel adds with a helpless shrug.

Adel’s story is typical of the estimated 1 million Egyptian children who spend most of their lives on the streets. But according to UNICEF Child Protection Officer Nadra Zaki, their plight has done little to stir the sympathy of ordinary Egyptians.

“Many people tend to see street children as little more than petty criminals, who fully deserve the harsh treatment that they get from the police and other authorities,” says Zaki.

“On the positive side, there is nowadays a clear awareness about the phenomenon of street children, about its causes and its characteristics. Now we need to think about the solutions, solutions that will give street boys and girls the protection they so badly need. And also solutions that will save them from resorting to the street in the first place. “

One encouraging sign of change is the work being done by NGOs like Hope Village Society, one of UNICEF’s key partners. At the Society’s centre in the working-class Cairo suburb of Rod El Farag, Adel is among a group of street children given the task of supporting other street children even more vulnerable than themselves. These "mentors" are taught the basics of first aid using a simple kit containing bandages, iodine and other essentials.

After dark the streets of downtown Cairo can be very dangerous, making street children more vulnerable to violence and abuse. It is at this time that Adel and the other street mentors may be called on to put their first-aid skills to use.

Adel keeps the first-aid kit with him at all times, ready for use whenever a fellow street child falls victim to an assault or suffers an injury. Although the kit is basic, it can be used to treat most minor wounds and prevent serious infection, at least until proper medical attention is administered at the centre the next day.

Hope Village Society has been working with street children for the past fifteen years, and with UNICEF since 2003. The collaboration produced the Street Children Health Risks Project, a preventive education program designed to help children living on the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and Qena deal with the daily risks they face.

Hope Village coordinator Ashraf Abdel Moneim sees a bigger objective. “The approach we’re trying is one that reaches out to street children and explores their potential,” she says. “In that way we hope we can find leaders who are able to help others.”

Changing the prevailing stereotypes about street children is also crucial. A clear sign that official attitudes are changing came in 2003 when a new National Strategy for the Protection, Rehabilitation and Reuniting of Street Children was unveiled by Egypt’s First Lady Suzanne Mubarak. This strategy gave the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) – Egypt’s main governmental agency dealing with child issues – a central role, coordinating the efforts of NGOs and relevant governmental organisations.

“The real significance of the strategy is that it adopts a rights-based approach,” says NCCM Secretary-General Moushira Khattab. “These children are not criminals but victims who have been deprived of their rights – the right to education, health and social care, and especially the right to family care. The strategy is based on changing the way in which society views these children.”

The strategy sets a number of objectives, among them, building an accurate database of children living in the streets and training social workers and others dealing with them. Another aim is to promote ways of drawing children away from the street and back to their homes, the most challenging task of all. Finally, the strategy looks to boost the role of NGOs, given their vital work bringing assistance to the children themselves.

The emerging partnership between government, NGOs and international agencies like UNICEF has encouraged hopes of an improvement in the situation of children like Adel.

EGYPT: Street children abandoned by the system

By irinnews.org

CAIRO, 13 Nov 2005 (IRIN) - It has been 10 years since Dalia ran away from her family in Manoufiya, in Egypt’s northern Delta region, and went to live in the fast-paced capital city of Cairo.

Now 18 years old, she has become so accustomed to living on the streets that she no longer wants, or knows, how to live anywhere else.

"I would rather live on the streets than go back to my family," Dalia said.

She ran away from home after her parents divorced, shortly after which her father began beating her. "He would hang me upside down and torture me," she said. “I had to leave.”

While Dalia’s chief reason for running away was domestic violence, aid workers say that poverty is also a major contributor to the phenomenon. According to the UN’s 2005 Egypt Common Country Assessment, almost 17 percent of Egypt’s total population of some 77.5 million was living below the poverty line as of 2000.

Salma Wahba, UNICEF Assistant Project Officer in the Adolescence department, conceded that poverty is a decisive factor in the majority of Egypt’s social dilemmas. She added that in the case of street children, poverty was commonly coupled with other problems, such as domestic abuse.

Now, Dalia survives by selling packets of tissues to cars gridlocked in the city’s notorious traffic jams. With the money she earns, she can buy falafel sandwiches – a cheap, local meal consisting of chick peas and bread.

"I know how to take care of myself," she asserted.

She and her friends, a group of boys and girls also living on the streets, spend most of their day hawking cheap products or begging. At night, they sleep in a public garden which they use as an ad-hoc campground.

"The key is to be together, to protect each other," Dalia said.

Most runaway children end up living in big cities, such as Cairo or Egypt’s second largest city, Alexandria. Once on the streets, however, children are often exposed to further abuses.

“For girls, it’s sexual abuse, often of the most horrific nature,” said Simon Ingram, Communication Officer for UNICEF in Cairo. “The borderline between rape and prostitution is often quite thin.”

The children themselves tell all manner of stories, he added. “Many street children bear scars from knife attacks, if not from sex attacks, from other street children trying to steal from them.”

Dalia, for example, spoke of how she was once kidnapped. "They wanted to hurt me," she said, pointing to a scar on her left cheek – a jagged, permanent mark on her olive skin.

Discrimination under the law

Dalia has learned to protect herself not only from strangers, but also from the police, who have arrested her several times. She says that, while in police custody, she has been verbally abused and occasionally slapped in the face.

Under Egypt’s current Child Law, any person under the age of 18 who solicits money in public, is engaged in immoral behaviour, or who lacks a permanent residence is defined as “vulnerable to delinquency.”

This law, however, carries a value judgement, said Clarissa Bencomo, author of a 2003 report by New York-based lobby group Human Rights Watch, which described abuses against Egypt’s street children.

"The word ‘delinquency’ implies that these children are a social threat – thus, they are treated as if they were a threat to the social order," said Bencomo. She added that such perceptions led to frequent abuses against them.

"They’re considered ‘lost souls,’ and policemen often believe that abusing them will ‘set them straight,’" she said, noting that policemen were generally ill-equipped to deal with children.

Bencomo emphasised, "These are just children in need of protection."

According to Human Rights Watch, nearly 11,000 street children were arrested in Egypt in 2001.

In response to the problem, the government-run National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) has held two workshops to train policemen on how to deal with homeless children.

Somaya al-Alfy, head of the NCCM’s street children division, said 200 policemen from all over the country have so far attended the workshops, which have been held for the past two years.

Al-Alfy noted that the legal definition for homeless children is expected to be changed from “vulnerable to delinquency” to “vulnerable to danger.” The amendment is currently awaiting ratification by parliament.

Lost in the system

Despite these proposed changes, however, many Cairenes, while hoping to see the children off the streets, have simply lost hope in the system.

Cairo resident Sherif Mansour, for example, recounted the time he handed a troublesome street girl over to a police officer who merely insulted her and dragged her into his car by the shirt.

"Two days later,” Mansour recalled, “she was on the streets again,”

Theoretically, children picked up by police are turned over to a prosecutor, who quickly decides whether they should be released or handed over to an official foster home.

According to Bencomo, however, this wasn’t always the case.

"Children quickly go back to the street," she said. “And the more they are recycled like this, the more they learn how to stay on the streets and away from juvenile detention or the possibility of being returned to their families.”

No one from the Ministry of Interior was available to comment on the issue.

"The best thing now for street children is for the police to stop arresting them," Bencomo asserted.

Precise statistical data on street children is scarce, and there is virtually no official information. "The government doesn’t make the numbers public because, officially, homelessness doesn’t exist in Egypt," said Bencomo.

Al-Alfy noted that no surveys of street children had ever been conducted. "These children are highly mobile, and it’s difficult to get accurate information on their numbers," she explained.

She pointed out, however, that the NCCM was planning to implement a survey in the near-term future.

More civil society involvement needed

While few organisations in Cairo or Alexandria have taken up the issue, a handful of NGOs and philanthropic groups are doing what they can.

Eighteen years ago, for example, Sami Gabr and a group of businessmen set up a “Village of Hope” to provide food and shelter for children found on the street. The organisation currently runs 15 shelters and drop-in centres in and around Cairo.

"We have permanent shelters, temporary shelters and reception centres," Gabr said.

The reception centres, open from 9.00am to 6.00pm everyday, provide a place where street children can go to seek help.

"We take in girls between the ages of four and 18," said Mohammmed Fathy, who works in a drop-in centre for girls, located in a low-income district of the capital’s Giza district. He explained that girls visiting the centre can watch television, get free meals and receive medical assistance if needed.

But when the centre closes in the evening, some of the children, like Dalia and her friends, prefer to go back to the street. "The more time the child spends on the streets,” noted Fathy, “the more difficult it is for us to get them to a shelter or back to their homes."

In an effort to provide medical aid to homeless children outside of the Cairo area, mobile units have been dispatched to areas where there are no reception centres.

In August 2005, The French NGO Medecines Du Monde (MDM), in cooperation with the Village of Hope, began a three-year project to provide mobile health-service units for homeless children.

According to Isabelle Braund, MDM General Coordinator in Egypt, street children mainly suffer from skin diseases and respiratory complications, often the result of inhaling an industrial glue known locally as kola.

Gabr explained that, by inhaling kola, which gives a brief but intense high, “children can survive the pain of being on the street."

Despite the fact that some organisations are addressing the problem, though, aid workers and volunteers are quick to point out that more help is badly needed.

"To be really effective, we need more organisations involved in this issue," said Gabr.