Introduction:-
Also Street children as defined by the UNICEF: is divided into children “on” the street and children “of” the streets. Children “on” the streets are the children whose have home to live in, but they have a full time work or a part time work. Children “Of” the streets are the children “whose home ties have been seriously weakened and who essentially live in the street” (UNICEF, 1993, p.22). Children “of” the streets are which lives all there time on the streets or in other words children with no shelter except for the street. Also, a “street child” is defined as “any boy or girl for whom the street in the widest sense of the word has become his or her habitual abode and/or source of livelihood, and who is inadequately protected, supervised, or directed by responsible adults”( Lusk, 1989).according to Kopoka Children whose work on streets and take streets as a shelter, usually come from poor slums and squatter settlements where everything is precarious: Family financial situation, overcrowded schools and even safe place where they can run and play. Moreover, wars or armed conflicts cause the increasing of this problem where the children parents are killed and leave them alone with no shelter or place to live . On the other hand, there are children whose have guardians, but the guardians sent them to work to help the family, others are forced to work and live in streets. Even there are children from well to do families or middle class who run away from homes. The purpose of this essay is to show some of the causes and its effects considering street children problem, and analyse the solution to differentiate between good solution and bad solutions.
Causes:-
According to Lugalla and Mbwambo, 1995; there are lots of causes for this problem, some are natural and others are man-made. Children have lost contact with their parents or families, which results the loss of the children in the streets. Some children are the offspring of prostitutes. Some families reject their children if there are handicapped. Some “respectable” parent disowned their own child because he/she is an outcome of an affair. In those causes the background is not allows poor.
Effects:-
According to Harding, 2010; for every cause there is effect, and there are devastating effects on street children themselves and on the society they belong to. The children without education are without future, which means that they will not be able to defend their future and they will face lots of difficulties to have a better life. Moreover, being undernourished from such a very young age causes bad side effects on their health like malnutrition which effects there immune system and as a result shorter life expectancy. There are approximately 48 million young ones whose are not registered in their country’s archives, which represents around 47% of the child population around the world. 20 out of every 100 births in Latin America never registered. That mean that all of those 47% are not on paper which means they do not exist. This is a huge problem as those poor kids do not have identity, which exclude them from other right like the right to vote or the right to have a proper education or even low level education. Moreover, criminal gangs which really represent a huge disaster, as they use those unregistered children to do criminals and violence. Those children have no criteria to know what is right and what is wrong. They may expose themselves to very cruel situations like prostitution, sexual violations, drug consumption and other forms of modern slavery. According to stolenchildhood.net “Street children in the third world, having no access to basic needs always become an easy prey of flesh traders. The demand of street children is high among the pimps and the brothel owners because these children sell themselves at cheap rates. These children are at high risk because they neither use contraceptives nor ask the clients to use them. Thus the chances of getting pregnant or catching a sexually transmitted disease is high”. A finite circle is problem, because when children grows to be adults. They will be the best shape for crime; there will be evil walking on his feet. There will be individual illiterate adults with low moral beliefs, with damaged psychology. Those lovely poor children in the past will be the evil which will oppress other helpless and innocent children. All of this means that street children of today will be criminals of tomorrow.