Who are Street Children?

A street child is defined as “any girl or boy who has not reached adulthood, for whom the street (in the broadest sense of the word, including unoccupied dwellings, wasteland, etc.) has become her or his habitual abode and/or sources of livelihood, and who is inadequately protected, supervised or directed by responsible adults” by the Inter NGO Programme for Street Children and Street Youth. (Inter-NGO, 1985).

UNICEF has distinguished street children as children of the streets and children on the streets. Children on the streets are those ‘whose family support base has become increasingly weekend (who) must share in the responsibility for family survival by working on city streets and marketplaces. For those children… the home ceases to be their centre for play, culture and daily life. Nevertheless while the street becomes their daytime activity, most of these children will return home most nights. While their family relationships may be deteriorating, they are still definitely in place, and these children continue to view life from the point of view from their families.

Children of the streets are ‘a much smaller number of children who daily struggle for survival without family support, alone. While often called “abandoned”, they too might have abandoned their families, tried of insecurity and rejection and aged up with violence…(their) ties with home have now been broken…de facto (they) are without families.’ (Tacon, 1985, pp3 and 4)

Le Roux and Smith (1998), Richter (1988) Konac (1989) Cosgrove (1990) and Aptkar (1995) have defined street children against the backdrop of ‘family affliation’ as opposed to street space.

Four categories of children who exist on the streets according to Creuziger (1997: 344) are, those with ‘families’ to which to return to, those who are maintaining ‘tenuous ties’ with their families, those who never come into contact with their families, and those who are children of street families.

Felsman (1984) has identified 3 categories of street children, the orphaned and abandoned (as a result of physical and metal impairment has become too much for the family to handle), those who continue to maintain family links but spend most of the time on the streets, those who maintain their daily survival on streets with family links totally severed.



Reference

Creuziger, Clementing G. K. (1997) Russia’s Unwanted Children: A Cultural Anthropological Study of Marginalized Children in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Childhood A Global Journal of Child Research 4:343-358.

Felsman, J.K. (1981) Abandoned Children: A Reconsideration. Children Today, 13-18.

Fyfe, A. (1989) Child Labour. UK: Cambridge Polity Press


Mukherjee, S. P., Coondoo, D., Khasnabis, R. and Banerjee, S. (2005) Estimating Child Labour: Some Conceptual and Methodological Issues. Kolkata: Centre for Studies in Economic Appraisal

Panter- Brick C and Smith M. T. (ed) (2000) Abandoned Children. UK:Cambridge University Press