At the Margins: Street Children in Asia and the Pacific

Andrew West
Asian Development Bank
Regional and Sustainable Development Department

Citation: West, Andrew. “At the Margins: Street Children in Asia and the Pacific.” Poverty and Social Development Paper No. 8, Asian Development Bank. Republished in Children, Youth and Environments 13(2), 2003. Retrieved [date] from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye

Executive Summary

The Asia-Pacific Region is home to nearly half the world's children, including large numbers of street children. This paper provides an introductory snapshot of issues concerning “street children” in this vast and culturally diverse region.

Although the term street children is neither a precise, nor very useful classification for children “on” or “of” the street, the term does serve as a point of engagement in considering the variety of issues and problems facing far too many vulnerable children in urban centers throughout the Asia-Pacific region. In this paper, street children is used as shorthand for children who might transit to the street, children on the street, or children who previously lived on the street, with a variety of occupations, including beggar, rubbish picker, shoeshine boy or flower seller, sweat shop worker, sex worker, petty criminal, etc.

Major themes in most descriptions of street children include homelessness, separation from family, and being out of school, but often those children designated as street children do not possess all of these traits. A further set of characteristics includes poverty and the need to work. These in turn are linked to vulnerability to exploitation and risk of coming into conflict with the law.

The circumstances and experiences of street children overlap with several other categories of children, such as trafficked children, migrant children, and working children. There also is overlap with a range of problems and difficulties confronting many children, including endemic poverty, domestic and/or sexual abuse and other violence, hazardous working conditions, exploitative labor, substance abuse, conflict with the law and juvenile justice, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Some street children are highly visible, and the subject of public concern because they are “out of place.” Some see such children as victims; others see them more as small criminals. Often, we choose not to see them at all. And then there are the “invisible” street children, those kept and controlled as underage sex workers or as laborers in dangerous jobs or in unhealthy working conditions.

Processes of placing children in categories run counter not only to development of holistic practice interventions, but also to the realization of children's rights, which, given the almost universal ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), provides the main international standard for work with children. This requires addressing street children's lives in context. The first context is connected with children's identity, (proscribed or realized) as citizens and inhabitants of a particular State. Each State offers different opportunities and dangers for life on the street.

In addition to difficulties in categorizing children, and the wide range of potential responses and starting points, there is enormous diversity within the countries of Asia and the Pacific. The region has varied economies and political systems that provide very different contexts for the reasons why children come to the streets, the problems they face on the street, their prospects for moving on from the street, and a wide range of government as well as civil society responses and interventions available to street children.

Some countries are linked through experiences, for example of colonization or economic models. Other connections stem from the migration and trafficking of children, many of whom are, or become, street children. The connections through children provide a set of different international linkages, some of which follow established conventional trade, but others are part of informal, criminal syndication.

While there are common features in good practice to address problems faced by street children, the characteristics of these responses generally are linked to interventions designed to address other issues. For example, prevention initiatives need to cover the range of situations that place children at risk, including not only the transition to street life, but also in relation to human trafficking, child sexual exploitation, hazardous and exploitative labor, HIVAIDS, drugs and other substance abuse, peer pressure, criminal behavior, and so on.

One important question in looking at the lives and experiences of street children is looking also to their future. What does an uneasy survival on the street now, or in other occupations, bode for children's development and future lives? Some are described as “permanent street children,” indicative of the growing perception that street children are a permanent feature of the urban landscape throughout much of the Asia-Pacific region. Many children on the street are controlled by criminal gangs, and apparently even linked to larger criminal syndicates (such as those involved in widespread international trafficking). If they grow up retained in a controlled criminalized environment, what other options can exist for them? How can street children avoid the stigma associated with perceptions of them as deviant? How can they have a choice?

Since the almost universal ratification of the 1989 CRC, emphasis has been given to its effective implementation including the development of a “rights-based” approach as an overall framework for addressing the circumstances and lives of all children. The CRC is especially useful in addressing the needs of the world's most vulnerable children, including those in “difficult circumstances” whose rights are particularly unfulfilled. Other international instruments also apply to children, such as conventions against torture and discrimination and, particularly for street children, the International Labour Organization Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour.

In many countries in Asia and the Pacific, provision for street children has been developed mostly by nongovernment organizations (NGOs). The development of frameworks for child-rights programming recognizes that governments have responsibilities as duty bearers toward the realization of rights for children, and must provide at least minimum legal and regulatory frameworks. Governments also must ensure that services exist and are properly implemented.

Places and methods of work include the active participation of children, working with them to begin to address key protection issues. Beginning with where children are living, it is then possible to look at issues of prevention, street work, and children moving on from the street to situations that place them at increased risk. While the focus of much work with street children has been on provision of shelters or temporary accommodation, education, and training, increased attention now is being given to prevention work. There is a great need for coordination of services in order to seek out and fill gaps in the provision of services directed to street children, and for standards to be developed, implemented, and monitored.

It is important that practice is reflective, that is it is embedded in local circumstances of children's lives and issues, evaluates work, is dynamic, and responds to changing environment and changing needs. Such practice is essentially or implicitly rights-based, and holistic (that is, looking to the whole child, not a particular aspect of a child's life). This is a foundation on which projects concerned with prevention, protection, street activities, and moving children on from the street can begin. In addition, such practice works to standards, ensures staff are trained, and works in partnership with others. It is necessary to recognize that isolated, charity-based approaches will not adequately address the issues of street children– or the problems confronting children “at the margins.”