Who is a street child?

According to the WHO, a street child is an orphan or an abandoned child who lives permanently on the street; a child who has a family but who lives on the street because of hunger, poverty, overcrowded housing or domestic violence; a child whose family lives on the street, too, or a former street child living in a shelter who still has a significant and real risk to end up back on the street.

Cairo street children

According to UNICEF Egypt, there are up to one million children living in the streets in Egypt, most of them in the city of Cairo, which has a population of over 20 million people. These children, who both live and find their living on the streets, are exposed, irrespective of their sex, to sexual abuse, prostitution, violence, pollution, city noise, dirt and serious illnesses (anemia, cholera, tuberculosis, hiv, aids and venereal diseases). Children often look for comfort in drugs for example by sniffing glue to alleviate their hard lives.

The most vulnerable are the street girls, many of whom end up becoming street mothers. Society treats the children who live, sleep, beg and sell inexpensive items on the streets as a nuisance or even criminals, who are considered guilty of their own plight. The biggest problem for the street children in Cairo is their invisibility – many of them have no birth certificate, which excludes them from the public social security system including education and health care.

Street children are casualties of poverty, a high birth rate, overcrowded homes, family conflicts and domestic violence. The number of street children is growing, for the rising living costs drive more and more families into economically desperate situations.