It is currently estimated that 150 million children are living and working on the streets
across the world...
Street children can be found in nearly every country, whether they are
so-called "developed" or not. The majority are born in and destined to a
life of extreme poverty, in which they have ZERO opportunity to stand
up for themselves and are completely subject to a fight for survival.
Most of them have parents who are poor and uneducated, unable to support
a child with the most basic of necessities. Some of them have parents
who have cast them out as unwanted. Others are the unexpected children
of prostitutes, or have been orphaned when their parents died. Some of
them run away from home due to physical and sexual abuse. Most of these
children are born without birth certificates, unable to get
documentation as a citizen from their government, and are therefore
unidentified by the system. With parents unable or unwilling to care
for them, and governments who often neglects or completely ignores them,
these children are left to fend for themselves. But how can a child
fend for themselves in the BIG world out there?
They are forced to BEG...
Street
children are found exclusively in urban cities - the hubs of people and
money - where they beg in the streets for money from the passersby.
Often times, rural and uneducated parents will move their families to
the city in hopes that they will be able to earn more money, only to
find job competition and a rising cost of living. As a consequence,
parents inevitably must force their children to work in order to put
food on the table, and children quickly become a commodity, where more
hands out on the streets means more income for the family. Many of
these children, who are new to the city streets and naive to the
corruption when money is involved, are quickly kidnapped and abused in
order to make money for their kidnappers.
In India, which contains the largest population of street children (18 million), there are "beggar
mafias"
- groups who gather up street children and force them to beg for money
to pay the mafia members. There are many cases where children have been
approached by someone who pretends to be a social worker, but drugs
their food and takes them to a hospital where one (or several) of their
limbs are amputated.
"In what was dubbed the ‘
arms for alms’
scandal, doctors were filmed by Indian journalists agreeing to cut off
the healthy limbs of children for just £100". This apparently makes
the children "better beggars" - more shocking and invoking more guilt in
the "hearts" of people passing them in the street - which means more
money for the mafia. The children, however, have been permanently
scarred.
They are forced to do Hard Labor...
Many
street children and children of impoverished families are recruited to
work for factories, since their small hands and keen eyesight make them
very effective at sewing clothing and gluing small parts together. The
International Labor Organization estimates that over 250 million
children between the ages of 5 and 14 are working in developing
countries.
In
China, many of the factories and sweatshops that produce the majority
of the products imported by the US and Europe employ child workers.
Here, children work on average 10-14 hours a day and make less than half
the wages of an adult. Many children are working in very dangerous
conditions. In 2003, a fireworks factory exploded in Hebei Province,
China, where one child died and 34 other children were injured.
Investigators found that the children were being forced by their school
teacher to make fireworks in the factory. Some of these children had a
quota of 1,000 fireworks per day.
The
abuse of child labor is well-known in India, where the majority of
people are so poor that they are unable care for their children, and
often sell them into "bonded labor" - where children become slaves,
making little or no wages, and are expected to work for their "master"
for their entire life. It is estimated that there are 15 million
"bonded" child slaves in India, working in nearly every industry,
especially construction, brickmaking, domestic labor, silk production,
and even the diamond industry.
In
2007, a textile sweatshop in Delhi, India was exposed for using
children as young as 10 to produce clothing for Gap Kids during the
Christmas season. Many of these children were working 19 hours a day,
forced to sleep in the factory, working back to back shifts in order to
make sure their quota was met on time, and beaten if they were moving
to slow or if they fell asleep. Also, many of the children were not
being paid for their work, and may have been working to pay off the
debts of their parents or relatives. Despite being exposed in 2004 for
contracting to 136 factories that used child laborers, the Gap
continues to contract to factories in impoverished areas in order to
keep costs low, but with a new "policy" that all workers must be over the age of 14.
When
India hosted the 2010 Commonwealth Games, it was revealed that child
labor was used to prepare the stadiums for the influx of visitors. Many
of these children were street children, who had come with their family
or friends to the stadiums to beg from tourists. They were quickly put
to work, hauling rocks, hammering nails, and lugging tools around for
other workers.
In Mexico, 300,000 child laborers work
illegally as migrant workers in the agricultural industry. These
children come from poor families, often have parents who are also
migrant workers, and must work long hours in the sun in order put food
on the table. Often the children get infections from open wounds on
their hands, and also suffer from respiratory problems due to breathing
in the chemicals used as pesticides on the crops. In 2007, an 8-year
old boy was crushed by a tractor while picking tomatoes on a farm,
where the owner refused to take responsibility, claiming he didn't know
that children were working in his fields.
In
Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa, approximately 15,000 children between the
ages of 12-16 are being trafficked in from the poorest towns to become
slaves in the cocoa industry. Cocoa farmers often meet with desperate
parents who are struggling with money, and promise to give their
children a good job so they can send money back home.
These
children are forced to work as slaves in the cocoa fields, expected to
fill 80lb bags full of cocoa beans and carry them back to the farms.
Many of these children are kept in horrendous conditions, with 18 of
them confined to sleep in one small room, with very little food and
water, and are usually beaten when they do not meet expectations. 43%
of the world's chocolate (a $75 billion dollar industry) comes from
beans harvested by Cote d'Ivoire child slave laborers.
They are forced to have SEX...
UNICEF reports that there are 200,000 child
prostitutes
in Thailand, 400,000 in India, between 244,000 and 325,000 in the
U.S., 35,000 in West Africa, and 100,000 in the Philippines, Taiwan
and Brazil.
According
to the child prostitution advocacy group ECPAT, there are at least 2
million children held in sexual slavery in Asia today. Most of these
children have come from poor rural villages, sold by their families for
several hundred dollars (which is usually enough to feed the entire
family for a whole year). Most of the time, parents are convinced by
"brokers" that their child will be a nanny for a wealthy family in the
city, or that they will be able to get a good job so they can send money
back home, promising a better life for them - sometimes children are
just kidnapped. The majority of these children will never see or speak
to their families again, as they are quickly sold off to brothels and
pimps around the world.
There is a myth among Asian men that having sex with a virgin will rejuvenate them and give them power. "There are surprisingly large number of aging and wealthy Chinese businessmen who believe that they must deflower a virgin at least once a year to gain the energy needed to be successful in their business enterprise and have a long life" cite.
To feed this desire for young virgins, each year tens of thousands of
girls are trafficked in and out of China from rural areas to become
prostitutes. Many of these girls are Chinese citizens, who have been
abandoned by their families due to the "one-child policy" in China which
encourages a preference for male children. Asia has become the hub
for European and American tourists to travel to for sex with children -
where they believe they are less likely to be punished or prosecuted.
Many of these men claim they are helping the young children by helping
them escape economic hardship.
"On
this trip, I've had sex with a 14 year-old girl in Mexico and a
15 year-old in Colombia. I'm helping them financially. If they
don't have sex with me, they may not have enough food. If someone
has a problem with me doing this, let UNICEF feed them."
-Retired U.S. Schoolteacher (cite)
On the other side of the world in Mexico, Columbia, and Brazil, the child sex trade is becoming a giant industry. Alex Fernandez,
a 14 year old homeless teenager in Acapulco, describes the process that
he goes through everyday when grown men take him to ritzy hotels and
pay to have sex with him. "
Yes, they buy me. The business gets me food. It gets me clothes, No one else helps me. What do you want me to do?"
Children here are paid $10 - $50 to have intercourse or oral sex with
older men, but most of the money likely goes to their pimps.
Even
in America, where prostitution is illegal, children are sold into
sexual slavery every day. The Department of Justice estimates that more
than 250,000 young American citizens are at risk for of being forced
into commercial sexual exploitation. According to the FBI, a large
human-trafficking organization in California in 2008 not only
physically threatened and beat girls as young as 12 to work as
prostitutes, they also regularly threatened them with witchcraft.
American girls who are forced to become prostitutes are largely
unprotected by the laws, and if caught, are most often put in jail for
prostitution instead of being considered a victim of human trafficking.
It is also estimated that up to 17,500 young girls are smuggled into
the US for prostitution.
(cite)
According
to UNICEF, it is estimated that over 30 million children have been
trafficked for sexual exploitation over the past 30 years, with the
numbers increasing each year consistently. Research shows that the
number one reason that children are sold into sexual slavery is because
their parents were too poor to take care of them. And those who sell
children into slavery will continue as long as the child sex trade is a
$7 billion dollar industry.
They are forced to FIGHT in wars...
Street
children and children from impoverished families are especially
susceptible to being recruited to fight as soldiers in wars. Some of
these children become soldiers due to a promise of money and food, but
many of them are kidnapped and forced to become child soldiers, where
the majority die. In the past ten years, child soldiers have been
reported in many of the wars around the world - most notoriously in the
civil war in Uganda, where approximately 30,000 young boys and girls
were abducted and forced to become soldiers in the rebel "Lord's
Resistance Army". The young girls, some only 10 year old, were often
raped, beaten, and forced to be sex slaves for all of the other soldiers
in the group.
Recently,
there have been increasing numbers of children recruited as child
soldiers in wars in the Middle East. In Afghanistan, children as young
as 5 are being paid by the Taliban to plant IED bombs near the roadways
where British and American troops are known to drive on. Children are
used because they are less suspicious, and they are also less likely to
be attacked by foreign troops. Many of these children are unaware of
what they are doing and are simply following orders to make some money.
Children have also been recruited as suicide bombers - with traffickers
being paid $7,000-$14,000 for a child suicide bomber. In May 2011, a
12 year old blew himself up during a street bazaar killing four
civilians. In April 2011, in a nearby area of Afghanistan, a 13 year
old detonated his explosive vest killing 10 people (including 5 young
children) in an attempt to kill a military commander. The use of
children as suicide bombers has also been reported many times during the
war between Palestine and Israel, where Palestinian children (often 14
or 15 years old) have been apprehended while carrying several explosive
devices intended for Israeli soldiers.
How do they cope with the Abuse?
Whether
they are mutilated to make them better beggars, beaten and torn apart
from being forced to have sex with 30 men in one day, forced to kill
their fellow citizens during war, or overcome by illnesses and disease,
these children are completely on their own with very little support from
the people around them. These children face the most horrible abuse
possible and many of them turn to drugs to ease their suffering.
In this picture, a 12 year old Ukrainian street boy injects himself with a home made drug made out of ephedrine.
The
most popular drug among street children around the world is glue
huffing. Glue is very cheap and can be easily abused, giving children a
quick, short-living high that takes away their hunger and makes them
feel warm. Many of these children develop problems with their brain and
nervous system as an adverse effect of the chemicals in glue. Some
children turn to drinking and hard narcotics as they spend more and more
time on the street. A research study in Egypt showed that the reasons
for drug abuse among street children were largely to help subdue fears,
help them sleep at night, and to be able to endure pain, violence, and
hunger.
It is estimate that 70% of children who are
living on the street are suicidal. Many of them are suffering from
diseases, especially HIV/Aids and other STD's due to being raped,
molested, and from sharing needles.
How can WE stop this?
As
you can see, the world is not a wonderful place for the 150 million
children who must live on the street without any support. If we have a
look around the world, we are hard-pressed to find anything that
ensures children's rights, and that is the main reason why children are
prime targets for abuse. They are mistreated, from the moment they are
born, and live their entire lives as suffering. Nothing that we are
currently doing is helping these children, not a single charity or
outreach group has been able to stop this abuse, and we cannot continue
to simply donate to these groups and just hope that these children will
receive the support they need.
We must be self-honest
here and realize that we are all responsible for these children's
suffering, especially when we want to simply ignore what is going on.
The very core of our entire world system must change in order to make
sure that no child is born into this world doomed to a life of
suffering. We must stand up and be willing to change in order to ensure
that children are given the Right to Life. We must begin with changing the current money system, as money has become the number one reason for child abandonment, child slavery, and child sexual exploitation.
The Equal Money System provides support for EVERY child, making sure that they are cared for the moment they are born until the day they die.
- In an Equal Money System, every child is guaranteed a home, with a bed and clean clothes, with clean drinking water and nutritious food.
- They are guaranteed access to health care, with all of the medicine that they need.
- They are guaranteed an education so that they can build the skills they need to be effective and successful in life.
- They are guaranteed to have enough money to meet their basic requirements of life for their entire life.
- They are guaranteed to have an Equal Right to Life as every other human being here on Earth.
In an Equal Money System,
we value Life above all - which means that no child will ever be
abused, forced to do hard labor, raped, or mutilated in the name of
money ever again. These children will grow into healthy, stable adults -
who genuinely care about their fellow man, their fellow animal, because
they were properly cared for in every moment. These children will
stand up for Life, because nothing will be holding them back, and they
will become One with All of Life.
Every child deserves to live a life free of suffering.
Learn how YOU can make this happen for ALL Children of the Earth!
and
To learn more about Children around the World who Suffer from our corrupt economic system watch the following documentaries:
Cheated of Childhood (Russia) -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ39fZWkgnM&feature=related
Child Factory Workers (Bangladesh) -
http://vimeo.com/1897357
Slaves of the Lake (Ghana) -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEDVFndYuT0
The Dark Side of Chocolate (Ivory Coast) -
http://documentaryheaven.com/the-dark-side-of-chocolate/
Very Young Girls (America) -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgqU3M6qAus
Playground (America) -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utjtLRqQuJI
Inside the Child Sex Trade (Indonesia)-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szKqtiKmbC8
Child Prostitution (South Africa) -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xISFxedkhl8&feature=relmfu
Cutting Edge, Child Sex Trade (Romania) -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz8R3mC1TEg
The Day My God Died -
http://documentaryheaven.com/the-day-my-god-died/
Fighting Child Prostitution -
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/422/index.html
Child Slavery -
http://documentaryheaven.com/child-slavery/
Invisible Children - Child Soldiers in Uganda
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3166797753930210643
