Why Are There Street Children?

The primary causal factor driving children to the streets in Tanzania's Kilimanjaro Region is neglect and abuse of a verbal, physical, and sexual nature. This abuse can be charted back to three roots:

1. The rights of both women and children are not upheld nor do they possess the education and security to be able to voice these rights.

2. Local traditions with regard to inheritance reinforce the subservient position of both women and children. Children are regarded as property to be disposed of as parents and elders see fit. There is a disproportionate number of first-born boys on the street who have been harassed out of the home by stepmothers, since they pose a threat to her and her offspring's inheritance.

3. Population pressure, reduction in the size of family smallholdings and the lack of employment prospects in the village have contributed to the breakdown and dispersal of Chagga families (the primary ethnic group in the Kilimanjaro area). These pressures also result in unskilled teenage boys being chased to town to look for work.

What happens to street-children?

Without help from organizations like Amani, street-children are impoverished in every way. They lack:

• the basic necessities of food, health care, and a safe place to stay.
• formal and non-formal education opportunities, particularly life skills.
• the protection and upholding of their rights as laid down by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).
• security and are abused physically, verbally, and sexually. Drug and alcohol abuse blot out the violence they face on a daily basis.

The consequences for society in the immediate term are increased crime, child prostitution and begging. In the long term, street-children end up unskilled and jobless, often resorting to crime. The end result is poverty for the individual and ultimately for society.

*used with permission from Mkombozi Centre for Street Children, Moshi (www.mkombozi.org)