CAIRO - For the past 30 years, the Hosni Mubarak regime has totally ignored the problem of street children, whose number will grow every year as long as there is poverty and broken families in Egypt. These poor children, who roam Cairo streets and sleep under the bridges, are victims and not criminals. Despite their young age, they feel they will never become fully reintegrated into society as respected citizens because the people do not respect them and abuse them. As a result, they live on the margins of society and become prone to committing all serious crimes of violence, Ms. Wafaa el-Mistkawi, the chairwoman of the Cairo-based Social Defence Society, said. "And when these male and female minors are arrested and sent to corrective centres, where conditions are often as bad if not worse than they are in adult prisons, they become more violent and run away to hit the street again, where they are forced by organised gangs to steal from shops, or beg and sell their bodies to passersby across the city," el-Mistkawi said. The main reason for this dangerous social phenomenon as well as other forms of child exploitation such as child labour and child prostitution, is extreme poverty and internal family conflicts that are caused by divorce of the parents, high unemployment, low income, social insecurity and high birth rates, she explained. "While street children are nothing new, the Government became aware about their problem only five years ago, when the police arrested members of a gang for raping and killing up to 18 homeless children in Cairo, Tanta, and Alexandria. The arrested members have confessed to disposing the bodies by throwing them off moving trains, stuffing them down drains or throwing them into the Nile. El-Mistkawi recommends that the Egyptian police have to create their own records system for keeping track of arrested street children and follow up their movements after returning them to their parents or family members. "In the meantime, the Government should also launch a project to collect information about extremely poor families and draw up fast plans for helping them and their children," she said. Poverty and negligent parents are the true criminals, not the street children, who desprately need the love, care and mercy of the people and not their contempt, or scorn, Mr. Mohamed Khalil, a child counsellor for the Imbaba-based Life's Light society, said. "Only a few months ago, the society received 16-year-old Hadir, who has been on the run from problems with her family. She was about to give birth on the crowded and unforgiving streets of Cairo that are filled with violence, drugs and sexual abuse, Khalil said. Sadly, Hadir's story is a familiar one, he added. "Estimates show that poverty and family break-up mean anywhere between 200,000 and a million youngsters have to fend for themselves on the streets of Cairo alone," he said, without giving the official source from which he had obtained this figure. "Their numbers are rising fast. Society tends to take an uncharitable view of these vulnerable youngsters," he said. 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 under the Mubarak regime, which ended on February 11. 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, Dr. Olaa Shahin said, adding that homeless children are also at risk of various kinds of physical and sexual abuse. About 86% of street children have identified violence as a major problem in their life, while 50% stated that they had been exposed to sexual molestation, or rape. Street children live in a separate world, one with its own set of rules, Mr. Hani Hillal, the Chairman of the Children's Rights Centre, said that many homeless children mingle with the public quite unobtrusively, wandering aimlessly across the capital's chaotic streets, 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. They sleep in groups under a bridge, in a doorway or in public garden in the centre of Cairo itself," Hillal said, confirming that street children do not constitute a surprising phenomenon. "They are a part of Cairo, a part of Egypt, a part of life," he ruefully said. "The school was failing me every year and still charged my parents money, so I quit," Adel, a 14-year-old street child, told The Egyptian Gazette while smoking during the holy month of Ramadan. Standing with Adel was Mohamed, who looked younger but was too shy to speak. "We beg or sell tissues at traffic lights to make a living,” Adel said, adding that he and Mohamed earn about 15 Egyptian pounds a day, more than some Government employees. Adel says that he spends the money on food, cigarettes, or glue, which he sniffs under October 6 Bridge with other homeless girls. "These girls roam the streets to beg and come to me at night for food, smoking and sex," he claimed. Most street children said they were illiterate, despite spending several years at school. But the emotional cost to vulnerable children forced to live in the street an early age is very high. "They are more prone to depression, anxiety and insomnia than normal children," said Dr Shahin, a clinical psychologist. "They usually suffer from family problems ... The people, who should love and protect them expell them," she said. Amal Shoukry, a 12-year-old street girl, who has been savagely beaten by two other children, said through her tears: "My parents are the reason behind this. It might be hard to tell how many children are living on the street in Egypt, but one thing is clear– the numbers are very large and almost certainly growing. With the difficulty of quantifying the phenomenon, studies estimate that there are between 200,000 and 1,000,000 homeless children in the country, most of them in the cities of Cairo and Alexandria. These children lead an unhealthy and often dangerous life that leaves them deprived of their basic needs for protection, guidance, and supervision and exposes them to different forms of exploitation and abuse. For many, survival on the street means begging and sexual exploitation by adults.
