By Madeeha Ansari

IN an interview for April 12, International Day for Street Children, a young girl spoke of her life with a smile. Her grandparents lived in the same abadi where she was born, and where she now lives with her uncle — who does the same kind of labour as his father before him. She used to beg, like her grandmother, but after a night in prison and decision by a tearful uncle, has stopped. She used to go to school, but doesn’t anymore. Why? She is asked. She just doesn’t, she answers with a shrug.

The story of intergenerational poverty, shrugged off, is common. It is replayed in each of the interviews with children having connections with the street, living in ‘informal’ urban settlements, sometimes for decades. For some, the story has gotten darker with the pandemic, with families sliding deep into debt. While many started work early to support their households — by about age seven or eight — formerly economic activities were often built around school hours. Now for children falling further behind without access to digital options, the possibility of returning to education seems remote.

The theme for this year’s international day was ‘access for street children’ — but the path to real options is strewn with obstacles. The first, perhaps the greatest, is a lack of understanding of who ‘street children’ are. The dominant narrative remains that they are either victims or delinquents, associated with gangs or mafias. Vagrancy laws carried down from the 1950s reinforce stigma and legitimise their temporary removal or detention, but this still doesn’t lead to long-term answers.

In reality, street-connected children come from diverse backgrounds including refugee, displaced and economic migrant communities. Often they lack the documentation that is key to accessing services. With invisibility comes vulnerability to harassment and exploitation. Some are unaccompanied, but many have families and parents who do love them — and some (by no means all) do fall into the hands of criminal groups. So, to design solutions, step one is to acknowledge complexity.

A second step would be to review existing laws and their implementation. One is Article 25-A which affirms the right to education for every child, without discrimination. To really get this for street-connected children means investing in community outreach, and working with organisations that understand their challenges and know how to tailor solutions — accelerated programmes, creative learning opportunities and components perceived as useful, including vocational training.

Then in terms of child protection, there is an opportunity right now to shape laws that are currently at different stages at the provincial level, and also determine how they will be operationalised. There have been plans to expand protection and shelter facilities, which should be safe spaces where the best interests of the child are paramount. At no stage should these become akin to detention facilities — something that can be avoided by putting in provisions to consult children and their families about their future, and to review cases on an individual basis.

A useful framework for formulating policies for street-connected children is UN General Comment No 21 on children in street situations. This emphasises a holistic, rights-based approach to address both prevention and response in line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The opening paragraph contains quotes from street-connected children, one of which is “Give us the opportunity to change our story.”

Several opportunities can exist, if we want them to. Some may lie in social welfare programmes like Ehsaas, which has elements offering support to families and incentivising education, especially for girls. When it comes specifically to street children, however, there is a need to recognise the gaps in social protection mechanisms, see who falls through the cracks — and how they can be filled.

Then there is the possibility of cooperation to create and implement rights-based laws. On April 12 this year, the Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari reiterated a commitment to street children that was first made by the government in the prime minister’s inaugural address. Her words were important because they defined justice as access to basic rights — health, education, protection. They were also important because it was in conversation with Mehnaz Akber Aziz, the MNA with whom there was most recently landmark cooperation transcending party affiliations, to pass legislation against corporal punishment. In that conversation, for a brief moment, hope seemed very much alive.

Every year, we celebrate international days to remind ourselves of what needs to change in the world. Maybe, by next year, we can give street-connected children in Pakistan more of a chance to change their story.

The post Changing the story appeared first on Cities for Children.

by Madeeha Ansari

A NEPALESE colleague once shared the impact of a well-intentioned government rehabilitation programme for street-connected children. The plan was to take them off the streets and provide protection facilities where basic needs would be addressed — and local NGOs like his were approached for support.

What ended up happening was a crisis of trust. Children would wait, he said, for staff who gave them up to the authorities with “blades hidden in their teeth”, to evade capture.

Nor would they stay in the facilities once enrolled. Children used to independence, even when ostensibly provided with food and shelter, would not be convinced they belonged there. A lot of it was to do with the stigma they had faced, being labelled as lazy, criminal, a public nuisance. But it was also based on the fact that initially top-down policies didn’t adequately consult the real stakeholders.

In Pakistan, there are two trends of concern when it comes to street-connected children. On one hand there is danger of the same story of good intentions being repeated without adequate consultation with children and their families. Secondly, there is a move towards criminalising children for being on the streets, echoed in both public conversation and policy domains. ‘Criminalise child beggary’ is a refrain. What this will effectively mean without addressing the roots of the issues that push children onto the streets is that households and children in extreme urban poverty will be subject to both harassment and criminalisation, for being poor.

With a government that has demonstrated a commitment to protecting street children, we would do well to look at what has and hasn’t worked elsewhere, so that resources are used most effectively. One big first step for the government and the public is to re-examine the lens and language with which we approach children on the streets, and challenge the stereotypes that may misguide our efforts.

For instance, the dominant public narrative is that street children are victims controlled by invisible gangs or ‘mafias’. While this may be true in some cases, street children do not have a single story. They come from diverse backgrounds, including migrant, displaced or Afghan refugee communities. Some may be unaccompanied without access to shelter, but the majority have families to return to and support. In our work, we often come across children who work around school timings to earn. These multiple identities are important to acknowledge, so we can build human stories and understand what greater structural or policy factors drive children to the streets — and how to support them to choose different paths.

At the public level, the language that treats street children as a ‘menace’ creates stigma translating into a less than empathetic approach. ‘Why don’t you work?’ is often a question asked while brushing children off. There is increasing concern expressed on social media that the phenomenon of street children is rising. ‘This is easy money’ is a common response. The truth is, there is no ‘easy money’ unless you’re rich. In a Covid-19 economy with skyrocketing prices and rising unemployment, more and more households are being pushed into making difficult choices.

At the government level, the drive to rid the streets of this ‘menace’ can translate into policies focusing on physical removal of children from the streets, which in the long run may not be sustainable. In Punjab, there has been a wide-scale anti-beggary crackdown, with over 700 children being removed in rescue operations in a single month. While the effort to take positive action is commendable, it won’t address those root causes. In addition, it is a question of human rights for children and their families to be consulted in decisions concerning them. In particular, any enrolment in residential facilities has to be voluntary, now or later.

Worryingly, with the new criminalisation drives, FIRs are being registered against parents. The experience of being taken from the streets by police can in itself be traumatic for street-connected children, as traditionally they are wary of law enforcement agencies. Many belong to informal settlements under threat by the authorities, and those without identification documents are particularly vulnerable. If we add to this the threat of parents being taken to jail, it will deepen the mistrust that children and communities have in the system.

This is not a defence of child labour, or ‘child beggary’. It is simply an appeal to look deeper at our own assumptions. To design responses that account for the nature and scale of the challenges, it will take this: counting the uncounted; seeing the ‘invisible’; and listening to the voices of the unheard. If we really do care, we should be willing to reach out to children and their communities, and engage them in ways that acknowledge their agency and human dignity.

The post Criminalizing Poverty appeared first on Cities for Children.