Saturday, August 27, 2011

Fallen angels

Fallen angels
M. Khalid Rahman discusses the problems of street children, which afflicts a sizable portion of our urban youngsters
He is a street child. As I accost him, young Karamat gives me a curious look. “Ask!” he speaks out in a tone that reflects his Lyari background. He says his father had, many years ago, murdered his mother, suspecting that she was having an extra-marital affair.
He was sent to jail and the child was given shelter by a woman, who, like many other women in the locality, earned her living by dealing in drugs. When she died, Karamat took to living on the streets with a band of homeless children like him. He is the stereotypical street child.
Street children are the casualties of economic woes, war, poverty, loss of traditional values, domestic violence and physical and psychological abuse. Karamat soon came to know that he could make a living not only by begging but also by mediating between the drug suppliers and the addicts. One day, as he was passing heroin on to an addict, a burly man grabbed him by the neck and gave him a thrashing. He was scared stiff when the man told him that he was from the Anti-Narcotics Force. The man took him to a deserted place and sodomised him.
Since he, like the other street kids, was not totally unfamiliar with sex, Karamat had no choice but to become a sex worker for him. This man also ran a drug racket as a side-business, and asked the kid to act as his agent. Street children seldom have a choice in becoming a straw in the wind—and going to school is always out of question. For kicks, these young souls turn to narcotics or to sniffing rubber solvent.
Like boys, girls too, are kept under the ‘protection’ of their ‘families’—who are usually gypsies living on the streets, or mafias protected by the police. Many street children gather money by begging or selling flowers, washing cars or via prostitution, receiving only a small cut from the money that gets collected. The city police, especially the traffic police cops, also share their earnings.
Then there are the Afghan kids, who pick plastic, glass, metal and other knick-knack from the garbage thrown out on the streets, and sell them to the shopkeepers. They roam the streets all day and then go back to their dera, where they eat and sleep.
Dr Farah Iqbal, a professor of psychology at the University of Karachi, collaborates closely with the Azad Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to working for street children. She explains, “Once a child leaves the family home—for whatever reason—to live on the street, he is labelled as a street child.”
According to the UN report there are 100-140 million street children worldwide, which is more than the entire population of France and Britain combined. Due to a growing food insecurity in the developing world, it is estimated that by the year 2020, the number of street children, worldwide, may reach 800 million.
These children normally undertake occupations like collecting and selling waste paper, plastic and scrap metal, amongst others. Other occupations sought by them include cleaning cars, working as shoe-shiners or in small hotels, selling water, newspapers or other items. Street children can also be seen begging for money and food in front of shopping malls, traffic signals, restaurants and hotels, shrines and other crowded areas.
They usually form groups to secure themselves from exploitation and abuse, which is common. The group leaders, usually the eldest or the strongest male member, dominates the group. He is considered ‘the boss’ and reserves the ‘right’ to physically, psychologically and sexually abuse group members to dominate and exert authority over them. Such leaders also arrange and manage not only their basic needs of food and shelter, but even their secondary needs, like interpersonal relationships and activityrecreation, indulgence in games, substance abuse or even involvement in sexual .
Dehumanisation is the most dangerous threat posed to street children in that it absolves people, especially the authorities, of the obligation to accord them their rights. Several institutions and organisations have conducted research on the street children of Pakistan, like the Azad Foundation, the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), Pavhna, Konpal, the Institute of Behavioural Sciences, the UNODCCP (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Control Prevention), etc. A law has recently been passed by the parliament, and is awaiting the president’s signature to alleviate the children’s suffering.
While problems relating to street children in Pakistan have multiplied over the past two decades, it appears unlikely that measures taken by our legislators will succeed—especially in view of the unwillingness of our law enforcers and corruption in their ranks.
Reference : http://www.dawn.com/2011/07/17/fallen-angels.html

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