World Street Children News :: Rwanda Streetkid News

Rwanda: Street Children May Be a Future Menace
The New Times (Kigali)

OPINION
23 May 2007
Posted to the web 23 May 2007

Ambrose Gahene
Kigali

I am inspired to write on the future that awaits street children in Kigali and other urban areas. Their current trend leaves one to wonder if they will not grow up to be professional highway robbers or even diehard criminals.

As one travels along Nyabugogo highway in Kigali City, the street children can be seen stealing banana and Irish potatoes from moving trucks, yet nobody seems to mind what type of fellows these kids will grow up to be.
Africa 2007

At one point, a street child jumped off a moving truck which was carrying scrap metal and landed in the middle of the Nyabugogo highway while holding a big piece of scrap metal, missing death narrowly from other speeding vehicles.

There are many non-governmental organisations in Rwanda, which are entrusted with the duty of helping and bringing up children of this nature to be responsible citizens.

These include: Save The Children, UNICEF, Christian Aid, World Vision, UNDP and KURET (Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia Together) among others. It beats one’s mind to find these powerful international NGOs standing by watching these children going astray day by day.

The government has on several occasions tried to relocate these children to rehabilitation centres, but most of them run away and find themselves back in the streets.

With the support of NGOs, the government cannot fail to round up and permanently rout these kids out of the streets. Besides involving themselves in lawless activities, street children portray a bad picture to tourists and other foreign dignitaries who visit Rwanda, the land of a thousand hills.

Street children do exist in almost all African countries. It is not, therefore, true to claim that Rwandan street children are all a product of the 1994 Genocide and the civil war that rocked the country for many years, which resulted in many orphans and homeless children countrywide.

Many factors contribute to the emergence of street children. The major factor is that these are children born as a result of prostitution, where the mother does not know the legitimate father of the child.

When the child grows to about five years and fails to be provided with the necessary love from parents, the kid will resort to living on street verandas or under sewage trenches. Other children find their way into the streets as a result of mistreatment from parents. These types are always furious and merciless to other street kids because they have been subjected to a brutal life. To them, everybody they meet is likened to their harsh parents.

Some other children are sent to the streets to beg for money by their parents.

These kids are always polite and beg passersby for as little as Frw20. At the end of the day, they return to their parents in the city neighbourhood with the day’s collection. Others of this type prefer to offer cheap services to the city people such as guarding a parked vehicle for as little as Frw50 or carrying luggage at the market in return for payment.

In addition to the hardships incurred by street children in their daily life, they are also vulnerable to harassment from grown-up city rogues who rape street girls and beat up the male street children. As a result, many are exposed to the deadly HIV/Aids infections.

Many national and international laws govern children’s rights namely: human rights law, private international law, the law of obligation, and special criminal law, among others. Children’s rights are not special rights, but rather the fundamental rights inherent to human dignity.

It therefore follows that children- without discrimination in any form - should benefit from special protection measures and assistance, have access to services such as education and health care, develop their personalities, abilities and talents to the fullest potential, grow up in an environment of happiness, love and understanding, among other rights.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child is an international treaty ratified by many countries that recognizes the human rights of children defined as persons up to the age of 18 years.

There is also a permanent elected body known as the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which consists of independent experts that sit in Geneva. Their main function is to ensure signatory countries submit regular reports on the status of children in their country.

The committee further reviews and comments on these reports and encourages states to take special measures to develop institutions for the promotion and protection of children’s rights. Where necessary, the committee calls for international assistance from other governments and technical assistance from non- governmental organizations.

In addition to increasing the number of street children, Rwanda’s 1994 Genocide and the civil war created a big number of homeless orphans.

The majority of these children have been adopted by families who themselves are very poor, to provide the necessary care needed by these children. As a result, some of them have defected from these foster families and found themselves in urban areas.

Their foster families have subjected others to hard labor, which is contrary to Rwanda’s labor laws that govern minors less than 18 years.

In coclusion, the government should give priority to the problems of street children, because the kids cannot form organizations to speak for themselves. Rwandan well-wishers should also assist the government in finding a lasting solution for street children.

PC Amber Thorne in her day job (EL506-8985)

A POLICEWOMAN has vowed to help as many Rwandan street children as she can following a visit to the East African country.

PC Amber Thorne, 25, who works at Chingford police station, flew out in February and spent a month doing voluntary work for charity Streets Ahead Children’s Centre (SACCA).

During her visit she taught street children to play hopscotch, volleyball, and bat and ball games and gave motivational talks as well as doing administrative work at SACCA’s offices.

PC Thorne said: "Ultimately, I saw street children who had been abandoned, abused and neglected now happy, enthusiastic and appreciative children leading normal lives."

"Doing voluntary work for SACCA was a rewarding experience and having seen first hand the great efforts of this charity, I am dedicated to helping street children in Rwanda."

She added: "The country is very green and reminded me of Scotland. It was not what I expected. I thought it would be dusty and dry but there were lots of banana plantations and it was very rural.

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"Living among the community was a unique experience and I got used to the stares and hearing muzoongu’ foreigner being called out at me. They were actually very friendly and were fascinated by my presence because you rarely saw a foreign person in the poorer villages."

During the weekend PC Thorne went to Akagera National Park, a safari park, the Artists Village and the Genocide Museum both in Kigali, and Jambo Beach, which has a lake.

She also enjoyed the food which was mainly vegetarian but beef, goat and fish dishes were available and ate some of the best Indian cuisine she had ever tasted.

After returning to Britain, PC Thorne decided to sponsor a child through SACCA.

She said: "I am selecting a child on the priority list who needs the most help.

"Just £13 per month will pay for school fees, uniforms and medication."

Street Kids of Rwanda singing
Children from the Street Kids of Rwanda organization singing during their weekly meeting in Kigali, Rwanda.

Rwanda: Street Children to Be Taken to Rehab Centres
The New Times (Kigali)

March 13, 2007
Posted to the web March 13, 2007

Gasheegu Muramila
Kigali

The Mayor of Kigali City Council, Dr Aisa Kirabo Kacyira, has said that the Council will ensure that street children are taken off the streets and accorded a decent living.

Addressing a press conference on the forthcoming Kigali centenary celebrations and the city’s challenges on March 9 at the Council Hall, Kirabo also urged caring persons to supplement the efforts to improve the street children’s livelihoods.

"This problem is not only in Kigali; street children and beggars are common in developing countries. Making these problems end can only be through everybody’s participation in one way or another. It’s a joint responsibility, not Kirabo’s alone," the mayor said.

Singling out the Gitagata Rehabilitation Centre in Eastern Province as one of the centres that will take up the children, Kirabo said that efforts in collating information about the street children would be doubled.

"Screening will be emphasized because it’s the only way we can know which children have guardians and those who don’t and need help," she added.

Responding to a query about the centenary celebrations’ time frame, Kirabo said: "I’m glad you people are in the media and your work is to speak and write. We have a better connection to the people through you. People need to know and we need their full support. What will you tell the people about the celebrations if we kept quiet [on the plight of street children] and concentrated on the preparations?"

She also hailed associations that have involved themselves in cleaning the city and asked journalists to also form a similar association.

"It’s important that you also help us in cleaning the city [the way] motorists, scouts and others have done," Kirabo said.

Kigali City’s hundred years of existence stem from the time of a German, Dr Richard Kandt, the first European resident who set up an administrative residence here in 1907.

DESTINATION RWANDA: PC Amber Thorne will visit Rwanda for a month in February and she is trying to raise £30,000 for charity Streets Ahead

A POLICEWOMAN is swapping patrolling the streets of Waltham Forest for helping street children in Rwanda.

PC Amber Thorne, 24, who works at Walthamstow police station, is attempting to raise £30,000 for charity Streets Ahead, which is based in the East African country.

It helps to improve the lives of homeless children and young girls forced into prostitution.

She is asking each Metropolitan Police officer to donate £1 so that she can meet her target and she thinks there are more than 30,000 police officers in London.

When she visits Rwanda, PC Thorne will teach street children how to play, cook and motivate themselves.

She said she was inspired to go to Rwanda because her friends Naomi and Mark Ogle set up the charity after meeting a Rwandan street child.

They decided to emigrate there and devote their lives to helping more street children.

"I have been given a giant hopscotch game to take with me and my friends have asked me to teach the children games like mother goose and hop scotch.

"Two of my friends were so inspired by what I’m doing they have decided to come with me", she added.

PC Thorne will go to Rwamagana, Rwanda, in February and will spend the entire month there before returning to Waltham Forest to patrol the borough’s streets.

She helped to organise an X-Factor for Rwanda event at SDA Central London Church, Crawford Place, near Edgware Road, on Saturday to raise funds.

l If you would like to make a donation to the cause or for more information, email PC Thorne on amber.c.thorne@met.police.uk.

Rwanda: Caritas Introduces Project for Former Street Children

The New Times (Kigali)

January 24, 2007
Posted to the web January 25, 2007

James Tasamba
Musanze

Caritas, an international Catholic aid organization in Ruhengeri dioceses has added a new artisan project in its programmes to benefit over 300 former street children.

Speaking at the official launch of the project, January 18, in Musanze District, the District official in charge of cooperatives, Salongo Nsolo who represented the mayor, asked the children to embrace the project as a way through which they can fight poverty and improve their living standards.

"This is a developmental idea which you should take seriously as it will help improve your financial status and lead to the economic development of the district," Nsoro told the children.

Reaffirming the district’s commitment to help associations which help children, Nsolo commended Caritas for transforming the children into responsible citizens. "The district will support such projects which are in line with the government plan of making all children live a descent life," he pledged

Dotta Mirco, an Italian national and architect of the project said the project was out of the realization to help preserve Rwandan culture and fetch money through sale of products to tourists visiting the Volcano National Park.

Angela Mukamusoni of Caritas, said they started a center for reintegration of former street children in 1997; under which the children are taught different skills including carpentry, welding, tailoring, hairdressing, and motor mechanics before they get reintegrated with their families. A total of 225 children have so far been trained and given work tools before being reintegrated to normal life.

Rwanda: Help Widows As You Discourage Begging

The New Times (Kigali)
January 12, 2007
Immaculate Chaka
Kigali

Poverty is the prime factor causing many Rwandans to live a devastating life. The most affected include the orphans and widows who as the only alternative have stormed the streets of different towns.

Most of the widows in Rwanda live a desperate life. Poverty is not only in terms of money but also basic needs like housing, food, education and clothing’s extra.
Western Union

It is due to poverty that most widows send their children to beg on streets or leave their families and go to stay on the streets as street children.

Street children are not the only people found on the streets begging, but there are a number of types people found in the city begging. Among these are street children who co-habit in the streets and street children who sent by their parents or guardians to beg due to the situation at home.

Street children are not the only people commonly seen begging on the streets, poverty has caused also mature people to leave their families, homes and go on the streets to beg.

One can think "But these beggars in the streets are normal, why they can’t work". I used to think the same way but after speaking to some of the old ladies from Rubungo in Gasabo district, who were moving from one house to the other begging for food, clothing extra. I discovered that at least they had a reason but instead of giving them free things, they should be helped get out of the unfavorable conditions which makes them beg.

While narrating their story to this reporter Anastasia Mukandahiro of 70 and Rose Mukakimenyi of 80 said "We are not pleased to beg at our age, poverty has forced us beg when it is not necessary. We have spent four years co-hosting in neighbors, we do not have food to eat, clothes to wear, money to take our grand sons and daughters in schools nor have houses to build on our own shelters said the old ladies.

I live a miserable life because I do not have a solution to my problems, begging helps solve some of my needs like food and clothes that good Samaritans offer me said Rose Mukakimenyi.

She further said though begging can solve partly her problems, it can not give education to her grand children and beddings.

Mukandahiro Anastasia told The New times that some time back she was depending to the pottery, were she could get some little money to feed the family but since the buying of the swamps were they used to collect clay from, buying soap and other basic needs became a great deal to handle.The issue of beggars does not call for the government only, it’s every one’s responsibility to help, not all beggars are after free things, among them are capable to do you services if given so long as there is a wage at the end.

Rwanda: Street Children, A Waiting Disaster
The New Times (Kigali)

OPINION
January 8, 2007

Richard Oundo
Kigali

I hope we are not waiting to revive Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal to the Irish government in the wake of increased street children on Irish streets, to allow us the plight in our midst.

Swift proposed then that since there were many street children whom the city and perhaps government authorities had failed to contain or rid off the streets, the said children be slaughtered and made a good dish on many dining tables of the affluent. Of course Swift was being sarcastic, ridiculing the authorities for their ineptitude to find a solution to the problem of street children.
Western Union

Today here, as you move on the streets of Kigali City and the suburb roads, there is an increasing spectacle of children, actually destitute children. These delinquents freely roam the streets appealing to any sympathiser to come to their help. They are begging to make a living. Many of these have been victims of the political terrain of the country over time.

They are a consequence probably of the bizarre situation that engulfed this fair nation. They have become destitute in the real sense of the word, without a shelter on their heads and with empty plates.

Only recently, the press reported in one of the provinces where a women forum was attempting to persuade the reluctant children to abandon the habit and go home. Here, the question which lingers is which home are children going back to?

Now, to the concerned authorities and the powers that be, this scenario is a disaster waiting to explode. These street children are dangerously coming to understand that life is characterised by living on the streets, eating from garbage heaps and loitering around. They will take this to be the norm. This is part of the citizens this country will have soon and they will need to take part in pertinent issues of this country. Question again is; how will they be involved when they are not baked at all?

These children are not getting an education, a prerequisite for their fair participation in national issues. They are left to vagaries and hazards of life; they too need a home and education lest they become a precursor to insecurity. Kigali City Council should not wait for the number of street children to increase before it notices that there is a problem in its backyard.

When a section of a population fails to achieve or acquire what it needs, it finds a way of manifesting the problem. In a city like Nairobi, it is paying for letting loose the street children. They have now grown into street adults hardened by the conditions they went through. They steal and rob with impunity. The police and country are grappling with the problem to date. A pedestrian’s security on any Kenyan street is not guaranteed. Thank God Kigali streets are still safe but no one is certain how long they will remain safe. Chinua Achebe in his novel Things Fall Apart says, "When you see a toad moving out in broad day light you know that there is something after its life." The presence of these children on the street could be investigated so that we do not treat the symptoms but look back at the cause of this influx lately and tackle the problem from that angle.

Kigali is peaceful today because the street children are still children. Today they are begging, practically requesting their donors to willingly handover the loose change in their possession. When the sense of frustration develops, they may use ‘reasonable force’ so to say in police speak. We all know the consequences of this action, when someone coerces you into parting with what is legally yours.

Then rogue elements in society always wait for wrong excuses. The UN has always discouraged the use of child soldiers but the ears of dissenters never listen to this. Such a rogue charlatan will not hesitate to seize that opportunity to recruit in his ranks these street children and use them to cause havoc and even mayhem.

The children have lost feelings, have missed parental love and are accustomed to the worst life case scenarios. They do not need tutorials about hard life, they lived it after all. So they will be a target by the opportunists.

City council authorities should include in its budget this destitute even if it means appealing to donors to intervene and give life and hope to this deplorable group to avert a future crisis. Most of the children on the street are barely 10 years of age who should not be eking a living for themselves. It is deplorable to look at a child running after a person saying kufungurira, meaning, give me something to eat.

Women Forum to Help Curb Street Begging

The New Times (Kigali)

January 3, 2007
Posted to the web January 3, 2007

Willy Mugenzi
Huye

Butare Women Forum in collaboration with the National Police are set to curb the problem of the increasing numbers of street children roaming in Butare town.

This was disclosed during a children’s party organised by Butare Women Forum at Huye

District headquarters recently.

The idea comes after repeated complaints from shopkeepers over unprecedented increase of beggars who congest shop doors asking for money.

The district leadership also targets the development of tourism sector but was worried about the increased number of beggars who may disturb tourists.

Throughout the festive season, a number of women destitute, the blind and children stormed Butare town asking for money to start a New Year like most people feast during such days.

Beggars include street children and women who sit by roadside with their children.

Marking remarks on behalf of the Forum, the President of Women Forum and the district Vice-mayor in charge of welfare, Esperance Nyiraneza, urged parents to be watchful of their children’s growth patterns before they can run to the streets.

She said that street children who have been causing disorder in Butare town will temporarily be put in rehabilitation centres while those with parents will be re-integrated into their respective families.

It was noted that majority of street children are forced to run to the streets due to their parents’ unbearable behaviours.

According to police reports, unemployment and poverty have contributed much to street begging in the town.

Asked about the continued increase of women on the street, the Executive Secretary for Ngoma Sector Assumpta Ingabire said the sector had tried to provide loans to women to start some income generating activities but after a short time the same women are seen on streets arguing that they incurred losses in their business.

After feasting with over 120 homeless children, Women Forum members gave mathematic sets, pens and other scholastic materials to enable them go to school.