The welcome address was given by Ms. Afshan Tehseen, Chairperson of the NCRC, who drew attention to the invisibility of street children and shared her own experience of working with them over the years. Madeeha Ansari (Founder, CfC) shared the findings of the policy brief in detail and talked about the importance of ensuring every child has the right to a childhood. Susan Andrew (Child Protection Specialist, UNICEF) applauded the rights-based approach adopted in the policy brief. Other distinguished panelists included representatives from civil society as well as the media.

Madeeha Ansari (CfC Founder)

Click here to read the full policy brief on street-connected children.

The policy brief launch is a huge milestone in our journey towards making sure street-connected children be seen, heard and counted. Our engagement with policy-makers began exactly a year ago on International Day for Street Children, 12 April 2021, when we organized a National Parliamentarians Consultation to start a conversation around adopting a rights-based approach towards street-connected children in Pakistan. Since then, we have been engaging with civil society as well as government to address the pitfalls of the current system and developing policies that best suit the issues on hand.

The next steps involve a call to action on implementing the policy brief and partnering with policymakers to make sure the recommended steps from the brief are turned into policies to bring a real system-wide change.  

Afshan Tehseen (NCRC, Chairperson)

Some of the key recommendations that were pointed out included reviewing and amending relevant federal and provincial legislation affecting street-connected children, removing barriers to formal schooling such as the requirement for B-forms and age-related barriers, expanding the availability of drop-in spaces or non-residential facilities and establishing a case management system.

The post LAUNCH: CfC and NCRC Policy Brief on Street-Connected Children appeared first on Cities for Children.

WHY would children, given an option, ever want to stay on the streets?

This question arose when speaking to staff from a reputable organisation in Peshawar, with decades of experience in outreach and rehabilitation for children who live or work on the streets. It takes special skills to engage with that subset of ‘street children’ — or the more nuanced term, ‘street-connected’ children — who have left home of their own accord and drift between urban spaces. Experienced personnel can tell you the answers are not straightforward.

The welfare approach, as codified in law in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Child Protection and Welfare Act, 2010 (amended 2018), would offer to these children the safe shelter that seems at first glance to be the single most important element missing in their lives. The streets of Peshawar offer a range of serious protection risks including sexual exploitation and abuse, and exposure to alarmingly high incidence of substance misuse. The KP Child Protection and Welfare Commission established under the act has the explicit mandate to offer welfare services, including shelter, to children found begging, living or working on the street or “facing extreme poverty”.

Why, then, have the issues not been resolved?

One answer would be the lack of actual services. While the commission is tasked with establishing child protection units in every district, there have not been adequate resources allocated. The 12 protection units initially established with Unicef support could not be maintained upon donor exit, and the shrinking of civil society in Pakistan has meant that several facilities run by NGOs have also shut down.

The Peshawar High Court recently took notice of the rising numbers of children on the streets, and responded to several petitions regarding the implementation of the child protection act. One positive directive from the court has been to ask the Social Welfare Department to produce a detailed report about the issues faced by such children, as well as the state of current welfare facilities.

This is an opportunity to really explore the varied experiences of children; critically re-examine the systems of support available; review fractures in coordination between different departments; and to assess whether the welfare approach alone is enough. Those who argue for a holistic, rights-based approach say, it is not. Children with experience of the streets, especially those who have lived independently, have a strong sense of agency. Even if rounded up and taken through a system which places them in institutions with everything that they seemingly lack — shelter, food, opportunities to learn — they may resist or even try to run away.

Every city context is unique, but in Peshawar children with loose family connections, who leave home due to violence or neglect, may find strong systems of peer support. As a colleague from Dost Welfare Foundation shared, they may enjoy being able to choose what they eat, to earn an independent income, to spend it on going to the cinema. The streets, for some, are an unfathomable but very real choice.

This is not to say that they should be left to their devices in a world that would leave no chance for the kind of childhood every child deserves. Every child has the right to an education, the right to safety and shelter and all the elements of the welfare approach. It is just to say that, in order to be effective, it is important to take children and their lived reality on board.

This can influence the kinds of options that would be considered for investment. Residential institutions alone cannot reach every child and may not also be the right fit for every case. Ins­tead, the first step should be for the So­­cial Welfare Depar­tment to gather — as instructed by the court — enough information to determine an appropriate resp­onse, and set up the continuum of services children may need. This could include prevention of violence at the family level; connecting with poverty alleviation programmes; action against organised networks that exploit children; or the establishment of ‘one-stop’ drop-in facilities where they can access learning, hygiene, or referrals to other services including drug rehabilitation. The partnerships that the government is establishing with organisations offering vocational skills can be a particularly powerful way of giving children the tools to build a better future.

One revolutionary rights-based idea would be to start the research process by talking to the children themselves, to understand the nature and scale of services needed. Stakeholder consultation should complement efforts to gather useful, disaggregated data around how many children are out of school, how many are in hazardous labour, how many are physically on the streets and why. With a strong, informed response, there can be hope to design real alternatives for street-connected children.

The post Choosing the Street appeared first on Cities for Children.

On 23 June 2021, Cities for Children facilitated a workshop for civil society organizations in Pakistan entitled “Change Our Story” – Understanding and Implementing UN General Comment No. 21 on Children in Street Situations. 

This was the second in a series of three events to forge a path forward for street-connected children in Pakistan, with support from the Consortium of Street Children. The aims of this session were to promote participants’ understanding of the UNGC 21 as an authoritative international instrument; to discuss real-world challenges faced by organizations in education and protection; and explore how to embed the rights-based approach of the UNGC in practice.

Participants included representatives from a number of organizations who have been working on issues related street children and child protection in Pakistan, including  Dost Foundation, Sahil, Search for Justice, Door of Awareness, National Commission on the Rights of the Child and SPARC. 

The session began with a conversation on who we meant by “children in street situations” or “street-connected children,”  and an exploration of some of the salient features of UNGC 21. The UNGC 21 takes a non-discriminatory, rights based approach towards street-connected children, with an emphasis on children’s participation in matters concerning them. It lays out three kinds of approaches: the welfare approach, taking the lens of rescuing children as victims; the repressive approach, which includes criminalization for survival activities; and the rights-based approach, which considers the child as a rights-holder and the state as the duty-bearer.

UNGC 21 holds guidance for prevention (pre-empting the challenges of poverty and domestic violence) as well as the response that governments can adopt to ensure the rights of street children. It lays out a roadmap for developing comprehensive national strategies related to such children. These include a legislative and policy review to eliminate provisions that discriminate against street children, and the practices that place them at risk including forced eviction. Data collection to gauge the scale of the challenge (while avoiding stigmatising street children or placing them at greater risk) is another national level recommendation, as is the creation of comprehensive child protection systems. Also,  importantly, the General Comment reminds policy makers and civil society organisations to acknowledge the complexity of the issue and to prioritise individual children’s best interests in all situations. As adults, it is easy for policy makers and civil society members to assume that they know what is best for a child. The UNGC 21 emphasizes that children must be given a say in determining their future.

Urgent challenges 

After an initial description of UNGC 21, the workshop participants were asked to share their experiences and identify urgent challenges faced by street children in Pakistan. Five major themes emerged during this brainstorming session: 

• Violence of different kinds including physical, sexual and psychological
• Access to education, impeded by factors like lack of documentation
• Discriminatory laws and policies that criminalise children and families
• Lack of data on the nature and scale of the challenge
• Absence of a national strategy for street children. 

Sexual violence, corporal punishment in schools and domestic settings were identified as major challenges for street-connected children in the country. Azaz from Dost Welfare Foundation emphasized that breaking the cycle of physical, sexual, emotional and psychological abuse for street-connected children was extremely important as survivors could turn to violence if they did not receive the help and support they need.

Identity documents like B-form and birth certificates were also described as one of the biggest impediments to street children’s access to education. Participants pointed out that since many children were from displaced communities and had been on the move for years, they did not have the required documentation to access public schooling. Sabeen from SPARC emphasized that a national strategy was needed to address the challenges faced by street connected children, to ensure that national and provincial institutions were working towards the same end goals. 

Iqbal Detho from NCRC shared that the present criminalization of street children, their vagrancy and presence in public spaces could be traced back to colonial times. Colonial definitions of vagrancy were designed to prevent people from gathering and protesting, something that could not be extended to street children in the present day and rendered the current legislation problematic. A point of discussion in the group was shared that many organisations were using the pretext of rehabilitation to institutionalize street children, which was against the spirit of UNGC 21 and needed to be rectified. According to the UNGC21, “Deprivation of liberty is never a form of protection”.

Recommendations for action

After a brief introduction to the case study of Uruguay’s participatory national strategy on street-connected children, the discussion moved towards potential solutions for Pakistan. 

Some major takeaways highlighted during the discussion were:

• An urgent need for a national action plan to make progress on street children’s issues, possibly within a larger framework of child protection. Ifitkhar Mubarik from SJFP stressed that the government needed to make its commitment to street children clear before passing any national or provincial legislation to tackle the issue.

• Comprehensive legislative and policy review in line with the rights-based approach and UNGC 21. Iqbal Detho called for the removal of discriminatory laws in particular. 

• A  life skills-based educational approach including vocational opportunities for street children, for learning to be valued. Manizeh Bano from Sahil and Ghazi Taimoor from Doors of Awareness both had insights to share around this, as there is a need to frame education as something that will add practical value to the lives of children who often need to choose between earning or going to school.

• Simplifying the process for obtaining identity documents, especially for children with refugee or displaced community backgrounds. Sajida from SPARC shared that the difficult process of retrospectively obtaining B-form and birth certificates compounded problems by hindering their access to healthcare, public schooling and jobs.

• Strengthening of child protection legislation and systems. Children face multiple risks of violence with little recourse, and working to prevent them from taking to the streets as well as to provide real support in working with families to overcome the challenges of urban poverty will take careful thinking as well as investment. According to the UNGC, interventions moving children into alternative care without consultation don’t work – they won’t stay – so sustainable solutions must be found. There is need to train officials as well as law enforcement agencies and put in place measures to reduce risks of harassment and have transparent systems set up to protect their rights.

Overall, the workshop provided civil society organisations with a chance to share their expertise with each other and gave them an opportunity to use the UNGC 21 framework to discuss the challenges faced by street-connected children. It will be followed by an in-person action-planning session involving a broader swathe of policymakers and civil society representatives, being planned for August 2021.

The post Change our Story: Understanding and Implementing UNGC 21 appeared first on Cities for Children.

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.

On 12 April 2021 – International Day for Street Children – Cities for Children along with the Special Parliamentary Group on the SDGs in Pakistan held a national consultation to review policies related to street-connected children and how best to support “Access for Street Children.” The event was supported by the Consortium for Street Children, framed with a view to understanding who “street children” are, and how to facilitate access to fundamental rights in particular access to education and justice.

The event was moderated by Hon. MNA and Convenor of the Child Rights Group Ms. Mehnaz Akber Aziz, with keynote speakers being the Hon. Minister for Human Rights, Dr. Shireen Mazari and the Deputy Commissioner Islamabad, Mr. Hamza Shafqaat.

The spectrum of participants in the roundtable included MNAs from each of the provinces including Kheso Maal Daas from Sindh and Ms. Munawara Bibi from Balochistan; representation from the social protection programme, Ehsaas; Ms. Sarah Ahmed from the  Punjab Child Welfare and Protection Bureau; Iqbal Detho from the National Commission on the Rights of the Child; and practitioners from national and grassroots level organisations including Sahil, Good Development Pakistan, Dost Welfare Foundation (Peshawar) and the Pehli Kiran School System (Islamabad). Importantly, we also worked to interview and incorporate the real voices of street-connected children via a video screened at the event, to truly illustrate the challenges of intergenerational urban poverty; what drives children out of school and into the workforce; and the vulnerability that comes with informality of status.

5 main takeaways:

1. Acknowledging complexity.

What came across very clearly was that “street children” is not a monolithic term. The situation differs in each urban context, with drivers of mobility including conflict and disaster. While some may fall into exploitation by criminal groups, it was shared that this was certainly not always the case. Many children who are seen on the streets are there for survival activities for their families who they do return to – or work around school hours. Understanding communities and children’s constraints as well as their voice and agency will help devise humane policies that are rooted in their reality.

“With or without the local governments our children have suffered. And largely they have suffered because of the War on Terror. So there is a natural corollary… It’s one thing that there are organized gangs but I think to recognize the problem, we need to understand its different types” – MNA Shandana Khan

2. Review of existing laws and their implementation.

One useful framework for shaping policy on street children is UN General Comment No. 21 on Children in Street Situations. We started out with laying out some relevant national laws to do with street-connected children, including the Vagrancy Laws carried on from the 1950s that represent status offenses and provide the rationale for criminalizing activities like begging for alms. In terms of providing education and protection without discrimination, there is Article 25A reinforcing the right to education, and child protection laws that are currently at different stages of development in different provinces. There is an opportunity to shape these protection laws and lay out their implementation so that the best interests of children remain paramount.

3. Cooperation and coordination.

There is need for communication and coordination across parties, legislative bodies, child protection and social welfare departments, law enforcement agencies and civil society. One recommendation that was suggested by Ms. Aziz was the setting up of an “umbrella” like network of organisations working on issues related to street-connected children, to share best practice locally as well as to connect at the international level.

4. Reviewing the role of protection facilities.

Not all children are unaccompanied, so there is a need to review on a case-by-case basis who belongs in a protection home or facility. Shelter and drop-in facilities have a place, and an important role to play in the lives of vulnerable children as safe spaces they can access with opportunities for learning. We need to think about what the state and private organisations can afford to sustain and how to offer, as Azaz from Dost Foundation said, “continuity of care.”

“A multi-stakeholder mechanism proposes a few things. First, how to reach out to children, how to hold parents accountable and also support parents to fulfill their parental responsibilities. This means there is also the need to assess its tailor-made evaluation which is part of what we call case management in terms of child protection.” – Valerie Khan, Good Development Pakistan

5. Casting a wide net.

The Ehsaas programme has several elements offering support and incentivizing education, especially for girls. When it comes specifically to street children, there is a need to recognize the gaps in social protection mechanisms, and see who falls through the cracks in urban spaces especially due to issues like lack of formal documentation and identity documents.

For Cities for Children, this was a first step towards creating a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of street-connected children, and taking a rights-based approach centered on non-discrimination, the best interests of every child and, as Usama Khilji said, “think more with our hearts when it comes to children.”

We would like to extend a special thank you to Ms. Mehnaz Aziz and Mehreen Mubashir from the SDGs Secretariat, for their dedication to child rights and giving this platform to discuss the issues in an open, consultative way.

Press coverage of the event is available here: Minister reiterates commitment to street children

The full video of the event is available on the SDGs Secretariat Youtube channel

The post Key Takeaways from the National Parliamentarians Consultation – International Day for Street Children 2021 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.

by Madeeha Ansari, Founder

CHILDHOOD is a precious, fleeting experience. As we navigate our way through the most extraordinary time in living memory, one of the most important things we can do is to remember how this time will define the earliest memories for an entire generation, growing up in the ‘new normal’.

To understand what the Covid-19 crisis has meant for children from all socioeconomic backgrounds requires stepping out of our shoes and into smaller ones. To varying degrees, it has meant: No school. No friends. Fear of hugs. Stressed adults. Sibling care. More time. Less time. The trauma of unexplainable loss affecting people in inner as well as peripheral circles, and an invisible terror that pervades every space, spares no one — and is seemingly without end.

The reality of phenomena like ‘no school’ translates into learning losses from which it may take years to recover. A study of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake by the Harvard LEAPS project found that four years after the disaster, children who had missed three months of school were 1.5 years behind where they should have been. Since students were behind the curriculum when schools reopened, they continued to fall further back. The story of education during the pandemic has not been a uniform one; those for whom digital options are not viable have struggled to keep learning, and will continue to do so unless low- or no-tech options are truly strengthened.

However, there is a radical argument to be made even for children who are soldiering on with access to Zoom: perhaps we need to be worrying them less, and giving them more space to play. Schools are closed and we urgently need to think about mitigating imminent learning losses. But there is one big missing piece in the conversation in Pakistan: children’s learning is affected by multiple factors, one of which is well-being. There is a lot of science to support the positive impact of happy, playful experiences on brain development for young children; they can provide respite from the stressors of everyday reality, and can help build the resilience to keep coping and hoping.

What has the crisis meant for children’s well-being?

Let’s then take a closer look at those who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Children in fragile households are experiencing even higher levels of vulnerability. Those at risk of being forced into child labour are experiencing higher push factors from families whose livelihoods are impacted. Those who were already vulnerable to abuse are facing increasing risks due to stress faced by adult caregivers — evidenced by more calls to children’s helplines globally. In India, calls went up 50 per cent during the height of lockdown, reporting cases from violence to child marriage. Compounding these are real fears surrounding the virus, which may have a lasting psychological impact. The motivation to engage with learning and return to school, particularly for those already at risk of dropping out, will be even lower than before.

In June, the Ministry of Human Rights launched a directory of organisations for reporting abuse. There have been a number of other significant steps in an incredibly short time span: a bill to declare domestic labour hazardous for children, and the convening of an official National Commission for the Rights of the Child. In its first public message, the NCRC stated, “it is adamant that the child be given the environment that is needed to raise a productive citizen”.

If we care about creating that environment — making sure children are going to school, learning all they can and able to be their best selves — it is crucial to remember that this environment also includes social, mental and emotional well-being. The lens of well-being is a powerful one that can impact all aspects of the Covid-19 response and what comes after.

Public service messages, for instance, need not only include an emphasis on masks and handwashing, but can actually be tailored to help both adults and children with coping, even teach adults to support children better. Teleschool broadcasts could incorporate a similar dimension, and take a more structured approach to boost resilience. A big part of a return to school should go beyond basic literacy and numeracy, to enabling teachers to be supportive attachment figures especially for children facing difficult circumstances at home. And a common thread running through these would be the provision of playful experiences for children to cope better — and emerge stronger.

Protecting children’s rights can seem like a massive undertaking when there are so many structural factors threatening them. Protecting childhood may seem like an even more elusive idea. However, if we are able to step into smaller shoes, simple solutions will suggest themselves as we walk through this extraordinary time.

The post Protecting Childhood appeared first on Cities for Children.

April 12 is a day for the invisible. As the International Day for Street Children, it is a time to extend recognition to young people who are too often uncounted, unseen and unheard – and therefore bereft of fundamental human rights.

Pakistan is unique in being a country where street children have been acknowledged by the government as a policy priority. They were mentioned in the Prime Minister’s very first address to the nation, and again as part of the “Ehsaas” poverty alleviation programme.

While this is truly laudable, there are a few things to remember in order to drive systemic and not superficial change. “Street child” in itself is not a monolithic identity, but is a way of clustering together the challenges faced by children in urban poverty. The International Day for Street Children extends recognition to a range of young people on the margins of cities – refugees, IDPs, migrants, street vendors, child beggars and even domestic workers. Many of these identities can be overlapping, which make policy and programme design more complex than is first assumed.

From the policy angle, there is an important distinction between children “on” the street – who work or spend time on the streets – and children “of” the street, who are unaccompanied. Street-connected children who do have families to return to still face insecurities that threaten their childhood. Those who live in slum communities often lack security of tenure and face constant threats from municipal authorities. Only last week, a settlement was demolished in sector E-12, Islamabad – not long after the announcement of the Ehsaas social protection programme.

Another prickly issue is to do with children from refugee backgrounds. Progressive intentions on the part of the government to provide citizenship opportunities to Afghans were waylaid by backlash. This means that in order to avoid involuntary repatriation, some families prefer to remain under the radar. Being unregistered makes families vulnerable to a range of risks including exploitation, and bars children from accessing rights like education.

This begs introspection on the part of the administration as well as the public. To say, “We will protect street children” will get unanimous approval – but are we going to be selective in our benevolence?

The bedrock of a rights-based approach is non-discrimination. It is to say that every child, regardless of background, deserves basic services, protection and dignity. For some street children, this might mean access to the kind of residential centres that have been planned by the government in provinces like Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. For others, it could mean plans to provide affordable housing for families, and strategies to combat the poverty or violence that keep runaway children from returning home. Otherwise, there is a danger of embarking on ventures that are less than successful – because they were designed for the idea, not the reality of a street child.

The first proposed step of the Ehsaasprogramme is indeed to create a strong enabling environment, through a constitutional amendment acknowledging food, shelter and education as fundamental rights. In the kind of state we are aspiring to become, therefore, no one would be left behind. The factors that lead children to live or work on the streets would be addressed at the roots, with viable alternatives being provided.

Moving from paper to practice is a sizable challenge. For everything that is to follow a legal commitment, one radical idea would be to consult the actual young people to be served by state policy. This would mean looking at street children as individuals and agents, not just passive victims deserving of pity. An asset-based approach would draw upon their strengths and the knowledge they have of their own circumstances.

Street-connected children can be resilient, vibrant individuals with sometimes innovative strategies to cope with uncertainty on the streets. The first step was seeing and naming them; the next steps should be counting them and listening to their stories. Having an idea of numbers of children “on” and “of” the streets, understanding where they come from would help guide the use of resources. As many commentators have said, a welfare state can be a beautiful but expensive vision – so it makes sense to do the homework before designing solutions.

April 12 is a day when the different identities of young people on the margins of cities coalesce into one recognizable form. However, if we are to follow this year’s theme and truly “Commit to Equality,” we need to recognize their different faces. From the Afghan refugee to the Punjabi migrant moving for a better economic future, every child facing the risks of urban poverty deserves what is being promised plus a little more: a home where she doesn’t sleep hungry, a safe space in which to learn and play – and a voice that is heard.

The post Comitting to Equality for Street Children appeared first on Cities for Children.