The Unheard Voices: Street Children in

Kenya from a local and Global

perspective
“Street and working children are a common
sight these days in cities around the world
especially in the poorer regions of the south.
Deprived of the joys of a normal childhood and
adolescence, many of them die early in a state
of extreme poverty, or from bullets full of
hatred. Those who escape, struggle to survive,
roam the streets or waste away in despair,
relieving their suffering by escaping into the
imaginary in an often self-destructive way”
(UNESCO, 1995).
 Realities and Conditions
 Lack of self sufficiency,
 Lack access to essential services such as
education and health care,
 They face violence, drug abuse and sexual
exploitation, and disease including HIV/Aids,
 Poorly paid jobs, loneliness, police harassment
and even death.
 Homelessness,
 Lack of identification papers (West ,2003)
 They do not show up on the national census(
UNESCO, 1995).
Understanding the Terms
 Rotheram-Borus et.al(1991) defines homeless
youths to include those who have left their
homes without a parent's or guardian's consent
(runaways), those who are thrown out of their
homes (throwaways), those who leave
problematic social service placements (system
kids), and those lacking basic shelter (street
youths).
 further divided into ‘children on the
streets’ and ‘children of the streets’.
Children on the streets maintain family
contact and often return home to sleep,
but spend most of their time on the
streets either working or having fun.
Children of the streets are youth who
live, work, and sleep on the streets
(Ensign, 1998).
Background to International Youth
Homelessness
 Homelessness emerged as a public concern in the
United States in the late 1970s and early 1980s
 By the mid-1980s to early 1990s, the visibly
homeless were becoming a common sight even
among those countries with well-developed social
safety-net programs, such as Canada. Glasser &
Brigman (1999)
 Street children in Africa are a recent development
but frequently reflects patterns of exploitation
emanating from colonialism in the early 20th
century. Bamurange as cited in Kilbride (2000)
 Extent of International
Homelessness
 The hidden and isolated nature of street children makes
accurate statistics difficult to gather
 UNICEF (1989) estimates there are approximately 100
million street children worldwide with that number
constantly growing.
 There are up to 40 million street children in Latin America.
In India, there are at least 18 million and 10million in Africa
 In Guatemala, 1.45 million children work on the streets in
a country where the total population is about 8 million. In
Philippines, 1.2 mil children live and work on the streets
while in, Thailand, an estimated 800,000 girls under the
age of 20 work on the streets or in brothels as prostitutes (
Rocky. M in Congressional Hearing, 1992).
 In the United States, estimates of homeless youth range
from 500,000 to 2million (Enisgn, 1998)
 In Canada it is estimated at 15,000 and over in Greater
Toronto area alone by McCrossin
 Kenya: Introduction
 Located in East Africa with a population of
around 37.9 million people, 2.78 growth rate
(2008 est), 60% of this population is below 20
years of age, with 40% unemployment rate. 50%
of the population is estimated to be below
poverty line (2000 est.)
 The life expectancy rate in Kenya is said to be
56.64 years.
 The total area is 582,650 sq km (CIA, 2008).
 It is estimated that 1.2 million people are living
with HIV/AIDS and 150,000 HIV/AIDS deaths
(2003 est.) (CIA,2008)
 Street Children Situation in Kenya
 Estimated 250,000 children in Kenya living on the streets.

 Marginalized from basic services and support

 Harassment and abuse from the police and within the juvenile justice system

 For some the street is the only home they know- born and bled in the streets.

 Succumb to demeaning ways of living e.g. voluntary/forced engagement in child

labor, crime involvement, forced/opted early girl child marriages, prostitution,
begging, rampant abuse of cheaply & readily available drugs e.g. bhang, glue and
cigarettes.

 Rape, sodomy, police arrests and harassments, hunger and serious physical assaults
by both members of the public and older colleagues in the streets.
 Prostitution: one in 10 cases less than 10 years of age involved in sex work.
According to a new report on the sexual exploitation of adolescents and youth on the
Kenyan coast, 30 per cent, or more than one in four girls between 12 and 18 years,
are selling sex for cash (UNICEF 2006).
 Push Factors
 incompatibility with family and step family members, disrupted
and dysfunctional families, neglectful parents, coercive and
abusive parents (emotional, physical and sexual abuse), parental
rejection and problems in school that often produced further
conflict with parents by (Hagan & McCarthy 1997)
 Rejection and stigmatization by family and community of orgin
for gay and lesbian identified youth are also reasons for
homelessness (Ensign, 1998)
 Structural adjustment programmes and globalization has led to
rapid urbanization. One of the negative consequences of these
changes is the emergence of large numbers of children on the
streets. (kopoka,2000)
 Poverty
 Abuse of drugs and armed conflict. A case point is the election
violence in Kenya after the 2007 general election, many children
lost their guardians or they were displaced.
 HIV/Aids is also a cause for children coming onto the streets
especially in the global south. (West, 2003)
 Health
 Adolescents have unique barriers to health which include
confusion over legal consent to seek care, office hours that
conflict with school, and discomfort with traditional health
care settings.
 Health status data on homeless adolescents are limited in
both quantity and quality. They have greater problems with
access to health care, including a more profound lack of
insurance/payment sources, anxiety over issues of
confidentiality. Enisgn (1998)
 The risky behavior by street children put them at health
risk which include susceptibility to infectious diseases;
vulnerability to HIV/AIDs, physical and sexual abuse and
drug abuse.
 Health
 Resistance by street children to accessing the formal health system, primarily due to
a perceived discomfort and fear that they would not receive the intended care, or
else would receive care in a very unsupportive and disrespectful manner. Karabanow
et.al (2007)
 Street children are seen as “dirty” this makes them not accepted in health care
settings. Homeless youth are more likely to seek medical attention after they are no
longer able to ignore a health problem. Homeless youth don’t go for community
health services for fear of being stigmatized as homeless.
 The delivery of HIV-related prevention and treatment programs to homeless youths
is especially difficult because of the life stressors, living situations, and adjustment
problem of these youths. For example, trainers in HIV prevention programs have
tried to involve families in reducing adolescents "HIV-related risk acts (e.g., Winnet,
1991).However, families are typically the sources of the greatest stress for homeless
youths and so cannot be mobilized as supportive resources. (Rotheram-Borus,
Koopmaq,& Ehrhardt,1991).
 In terms of mental health, emotional distress and psychiatric problems are three
times more common among homeless youths than among adolescents in general.
 According to a study conducted on Exploring the health Experiences of Halifax street
children, it found out that majority of the street youth involved in the study
suggested that street life enhanced one’s feeling of stress, anxiety and depression-
much of this related to the continual requirement to meet basic needs of shelter,
food and clothing. (Karabanow et.al, 2007)
 Education
 Many street children in Kenya come to the streets after
being forced to leave school by poverty. While others are
“pushed out” (Killbride, 2000)
 In addition to enrollment problems, the high mobility
associated with homelessness has severe educational
consequences.
 Street children generally lack access to public education
services. Some are unable to go to school because they
need to work, because of discrimination or because of
costs.
 In most cases street children cannot access services
because they do not have any form of identification. They
are regarded as social drop-outs.
 While the government has waived the tuition fee and
provides textbooks, other classroom materials such as
exercise books are still the parent's responsibility (Mushtaq,
2008) .
 Social Connection
 Street children are seen as a public nuisance by
the general public. They have no real connections
with the public but they do develop strong
connections amongst themselves.
 In Kenya Street children are known as chokora,
roughly translated from Kiswahili as pokers at
dustbins or garbage heaps in search of food and
other valuables (Killbride et.al, 2000) Kenyan
street children are frequently observed sniffing
glue. The “glue bottle” in the public mind
negatively symbolizes what is taken to be in
Kenya, the defining characteristic of street
children: that is people who are trouble makers
and a threat to society (Kilbride et.al, 2000)
 Exploitation
 Vulnerable to hazardous and/or exploitative labor
situations. Many formal and informal sectors depend on
children as a source of cheap labor. (West, 2003)

 Insatiable demand for child sex workers. Children may be

engaged in commercial sex work just to make a living. For
the girl child sexual exploitation is not only by strangers but
also by the street boys as a form of payment for protection.

 A case in point is during the skirmishes that happened in

Kenya during the 2007 general elections. Street children
were used by politicians to cause havoc and chaos and as a
result many were killed and some injured.
 Employability
 Most of the street children are
illiterate with no basic skills to help
them get proper jobs. The attitude
of the society towards street youth
acts as a barrier even to
employment. They are treated with
suspicion and seen as thieves.
 Interventions
Government Level
 Support the efforts of Non-Government organizations in
addressing the issue of street children.
 It’s also the role of the government to protect all citizens which
includes the street children.
 It’s also important to get the business sector involved with the
oversight of the Government because more often than not they
are the beneficiaries of cheap labor provided by street children.
 It is the responsibility of the government to develop a system that
will include the street children population to be reflected in the
national census.
 Promote and increase access to family planning services especially
for the rural communities. This will help to reverse the population
explosion in Kenya.
 Develop more employment, recreational and participation
opportunities to channel youth’s energy in positive directions and
enhance their ability to make contribution towards nation building.
 Organization Level
 Commitment by organizations dealing with street children
through networking.This includes improving
communication, being less competitive about funding and
sharing all the available resources. Services need to be
Linked together to provide a more holistic approach.
 Programs designed for helping youth living in the streets
should be flexible enough to accommodate their individual
needs rather than conducting a blanket intervention that
gives no room to meet individual needs.
 Organizations to provide youth friendly services especially
in health centers by ensuring staff that are trained in
providing services to children and youth.
 Community Level
 Teachers: They have daily contact with children and
interact with many parents. They should be able to identify
emerging problems before they become critical, to
communicate with parents and to assist in referring families
to professionals.
 Family outreach programs: available to families to help
they cope with issues at the family level. To deal with
issues such as communication, decision making, self
esteem, parental control.
 To address the attitude of the society towards street
children there is need to highlight the success stories, of
how street children can be reformed
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