Africa Kenya UNICEF works with
CARITAS and with other non-governmental organizations in Kenya to address street children.
South Africa Street Children are legally protected by the
South African Children's Act, Act 38 of 2005, which defines street children as "children living, working and begging on the street" and as "Children in need of Care and Protection".
South Africa has done much to address street children and the South African government now partially funds street children organisations. Parents of vulnerable children can access a monthly child care grant, and organisations have developed effective street outreach, drop-in centres, therapeutic residential care, and prevention and early intervention services for street children. Comprehensive Street level research, completed in the year 2000 in Cape Town, This approach has effectively reduced the number of children living on the streets of Cape Town by over 90%, even with over 200 children continuing to move onto the street each year. It has also seen absconding-from-care rates decline to less than 7%, and the success rate for getting children off the street has reached 80 to 90%. The number of street-vulnerable children, that is the number of chronically neglected, sexually and physically abused, traumatised community children, remains however unacceptably high, with school drop-out rates a real concern and with schools battling to deal with the high number of traumatized children they have to contend with.
Sierra Leone Sierra Leone was considered to be the poorest nation in the world, according to the UN World Poverty Index 2008. Whilst the current picture is more optimistic, with
World Bank projections for 2013/14 ranked Sierra Leone as having the second fastest-growing economy in the world, a prevalent lack of child rights and
extreme poverty remain widespread. There are close to 50,000 children relying upon the streets for their survival, a portion of them living full-time on the streets. There are also an estimated 300,000 children in Sierra Leone without access to education.
India India has an estimated one million or more
street children in each of the following cities:
New Delhi,
Kolkata, and
Mumbai. When considering India as a whole, there are approximately 18 million children who earn their living off the streets in cities and rural areas. It is more common for street children to be male and the average age is fourteen. Although adolescent girls are more protected by families than boys are, when girls do break the bonds they are often worse off than boys are, as they are lured into
prostitution. Due to the acceleration in economic growth in India, an economic rift has appeared, with just over thirty-two per cent of the population living below the poverty line. Owing to
unemployment, increasing
rural-urban migration, the attraction of city life, and a lack of political will, India has developed one of the largest
child labor forces in the world.
Indonesia According to a 2007 study, there were over 170,000 street children living in Indonesia. In 2000, about 1,600 children were living on the streets of
Yogyakarta. Approximately five hundred of these children were girls between four and sixteen years of age. Many children began living on the streets after the
1997 Asian financial crisis in Indonesia. Girls living on the street face more difficulties than boys living on the street as often girls are abused by the street boys because of the patriarchal nature of the culture. "They abuse girls, refuse to acknowledge them as street children, but liken them to prostitutes."
Pakistan ,
Afghanistan (June 2003) The number of street children in
Pakistan is estimated to be between 1.2 million and 1.5 million. Issues like domestic violence,
unemployment,
natural disasters,
poverty, unequal
industrialization, unplanned rapid
urbanization, family disintegration and lack of education are considered the major factors behind the increase in the number of street children.
Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC) carried out a study which presented 56.5% of the children interviewed in Multan, 82.2% in Karachi, 80.5% in Hyderabad and 83.3% in Sukkur were forced to move on to the streets after the
2010 and
2011 floods.
Philippines According to the 1998 report titled "Situation of the Youth in the Philippines", there are about 1.5 million street children in the
Philippines, 70% of which are boys. Street children as young as ten years old can be imprisoned alongside adults under the country's Vagrancy Act; in past cases, physical and sexual abuse have occurred as a result of this legislation.
Vietnam According to The Street Educators' Club, the number of street children in
Vietnam has shrunk from 21,000 in 2003 to 8,000 in 2007. The number dropped from 1,507 to 113 in
Hanoi and from 8,507 to 794 in
Ho Chi Minh City. There are currently almost four hundred humanitarian organizations and international
non-governmental organizations providing help to about 15,000 Vietnamese children.
North Korea Ever since the
North Korean famine in the 1990s,
North Korea has hosted a large population of homeless children known as kotjebi, or "flower swallows" in Korean. In 2018,
Daily NK reported that the government was interning kotjebi in
kwalliso camps and that the children there were beginning to suffer from malnutrition due to low rations. In 2021, the state-run
Korean Central News Agency reported that hundreds of homeless orphans "volunteered" to work in manual labor projects, raising concerns over the possibility that homeless North Korean children were being conscripted into forced labor projects. The
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization also reported that homeless children faced increasing risks of starvation due to the
COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent
food security crisis.
Europe Greece Greece's street child activity is heavily connected with
human trafficking. In 2003, street children located in state-run facilities had disappeared. The disappearance is suspected to be linked to human trafficking. The 2001 documentary film
Children Underground documents the plight of Romanian street children, in particular their struggles with
malnutrition,
sexual exploitation, and
substance abuse. In the 1990s, street children were often seen
begging, inhaling '
aurolac' from sniffing bags, and roaming around the
Bucharest Metro. In the 21st century, the number of children living permanently on the streets dropped significantly, although more children worked on the streets all day, but returned home to their parents at night. By 2004, it was estimated that less than 500 children lived permanently in the streets in Bucharest, while less than 1,500 worked in the streets during the day, returning home to their families in the evening. By 2014, the street children of the 1990s were adults, and many were reported to be living 'underground' in the tunnels and sewers beneath the streets of Bucharest, with some having their own children.
Russia In 2001, it was estimated that Russia had about one million street children, and one in four
crimes involved underage individuals. Officially, the number of children without supervision is more than 700,000. According to
UNICEF, there were 64,000 homeless street children brought to hospitals by various governmental services (e.g. police) in 2005. In 2008, the number was 60,000.
Sweden In 2012, unaccompanied male minors from Morocco started claiming asylum in Sweden. In 2014, 384 claimed asylum. Knowing that their chances of receiving refugee status was slim, they frequently ran away from the refugee housing to live on the streets. In 2016, the governments of Sweden and Morocco signed a treaty to facilitate their repatriation to Morocco. Efforts by authorities to aid the youth were declined by the youth who preferred living on the street and supporting themselves by crime. Morocco was initially reluctant to accept the repatriates, but as they could be identified using the Moroccan fingerprint database, repatriation could take place once Moroccan citizenship had been proven. Of the 77 males Morocco accepted, 65 had stated a false identity when claiming asylum to Sweden.
Turkey Research conducted by the Turkish Prime Ministry's Human Rights Presidency (BİHB) indicated that of Turkey's 30,891 street children, 30,109 live in
Istanbul, 20 were identified in
Ankara, and Turkey's third-largest city,
İzmir, had none.
Kocaeli Province was reported to have 687 street children while
Eskişehir has 47. The research also revealed that 41,000 children are forced to beg on the streets, more than half of whom are found in Istanbul. Other cities with high figures include Ankara (6,700),
Diyarbakır (3,300),
Mersin (637) and
Van (640). Based on unofficial estimates, 88,000 children in Turkey live on the streets, and the country has the fourth-highest rate of underage
substance abuse in the world. 4 percent of all children in Turkey are subject to
sexual abuse, with 70 percent of the victims being younger than 10. Contrary to popular belief, boys are subject to sexual abuse as frequently as girls. In reported cases of children subject to commercial sexual exploitation, 77 percent of the children came from broken homes. Twenty-three percent lived with their parents, but in those homes
domestic violence was common. The biggest risk faced by children who run away and live on the street is sexual exploitation. Children kidnapped from
southeastern provinces are forced into
prostitution here. Today, it is impossible to say for certain how many children in Turkey are being subjected to commercial sexual exploitation, but many say official information is off by at least 85 percent. According to a study that sampled 54,928 students in Sanliurfa, Turkey, 7.5% of working children worked in the streets. 21.0% of the children spent the night outside and 37.4 % were obliged to spend the night outside since they work.
America United States . In the United States 83% of "street children" do not leave their state of origin. If they do leave their state of origin they are likely to end up in large cities, notably
New York City,
Los Angeles,
Portland, and
San Francisco. In the United States, street children are predominantly Caucasian, female, and
42% identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (
LGBT). The United States government has been making efforts since the late 1970s to accommodate this section of the population. The
Runaway and Homeless Youth Act of 1978 made funding available for
shelters and funded the
National Runaway Switchboard. Other efforts include the Child Abuse and Treatment Act of 1974, the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, and the
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. There has also been a decline in arrest rates in street youth, dropping in 30,000 arrests from 1998 to 2007. Instead, the authorities are referring homeless youth to state-run social service agencies.
Honduras In Honduras between 1998 and 2002, hundreds of street children were reportedly abducted, tortured and murdered by police and civilian "cleanup squads". most of whom work on the streets, but they do not necessarily live on the streets. A majority of the street children in Latin America are males between the ages of 10 and 14. There are two categories of street children in Latin America: home-based and street-based. Home-based children have homes and families to return to, while street-based children do not. A majority of street children in Latin America are home-based.
Brazil The Brazilian government estimates that the number of children and adolescents in 2012 who work or sleep on the streets was approximately 23,973, based on results from the national census mandated by the Human Rights Secretariat of the Presidency (SDH) and the Institute for Sustainable Development (Idesp).
Oceania Australia As of 2016, around 24,200 Australian youth were listed as homeless. The majority of homeless youth are located in the State of
New South Wales. Youth homelessness has been subject to a number of independent studies, some calling for the
Australian Human Rights Commission to conduct an inquiry on the matter. == Government and non-government responses ==