For millions of street children, coronavirus restrictions have made access to food, water and shelter even more precarious. A global total of 100 million street children is often quoted, but the true number is believed to be much higher. As the pandemic takes hold across the globe, few groups are as vulnerable as the children who rely on the streets for food and shelter, who risk being further stigmatised and criminalised when cities lock down. Another fear is that the virus could drive homeless children back to families where they are at risk of abuse. Fear is mounting.
A teenager on the streets of Mombasa, wonders how he will eat. “Rich people can stay home … because they have a store well stocked with food,” he says. “For a survivor on the street your store is your stomach. The police have told us they don’t want to see us around after 7pm. Are we going to die of hunger instead of coronavirus?”
Bokey Anchola, country director for Glad’s House, an NGO working with hard to reach young people in Kenya. “Street children are having a rough time during the curfew. Food and water are a real problem as hotels and eating places where they would normally get food have closed down. Movement is restricted.”
The closure of eating places, drop-in centres and feeding services, as well as the limits on movement, are just some aspects of a terrifying scenario for street children during the pandemic. As small businesses have shut up shop in the lockdown, jobs that earned street dwellers a pittance, like carrying goods in markets or selling food to drivers, have vanished. Pavement dwellers are ordered to stay in makeshift structures and can not look for food.
Megan Lees-McCowan, head of Africa programmes at Street Child, said she feared Covid-19 would drive more children to the streets across Africa as schools shut and desperate families looked for alternative incomes.
“For us, there is also the spectre of the past,” said Lees-McCowan, recalling how during the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, some children were abandoned by destitute families, and shunned by communities that suspected they carried the disease.
Duncan Ross, CEO of UK-based StreetInvest, says: “The vulnerability of this group will go up [in the crisis], their need for services will go up and isolation won’t protect them. The danger is that many people see them even more as diseased and criminal. Anecdotally, this is already happening.”
In South Africa, private security firms hired to clear the streets were taking homeless youth to temporary shelters that lack qualified workers to look after them. Mpendulo Nyembe and his team at uMthombo in Durban, citing one encounter between a group of 11 youth and heavily armed guards.
“They are terrified. We are terrified. The people dealing with them have no idea who these children are, of their backgrounds.”
“People’s survival is suddenly in jeopardy. Many families that live on the streets have been there for generations. They have no stocks and could starve,” says Paul Sunder Singh, founder of NGO Karunalaya in Chennai, India.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/apr/15/will-we-die-of-hunger-how-covid-19-lockdowns-imperil-street-children
A teenager on the streets of Mombasa, wonders how he will eat. “Rich people can stay home … because they have a store well stocked with food,” he says. “For a survivor on the street your store is your stomach. The police have told us they don’t want to see us around after 7pm. Are we going to die of hunger instead of coronavirus?”
Bokey Anchola, country director for Glad’s House, an NGO working with hard to reach young people in Kenya. “Street children are having a rough time during the curfew. Food and water are a real problem as hotels and eating places where they would normally get food have closed down. Movement is restricted.”
The closure of eating places, drop-in centres and feeding services, as well as the limits on movement, are just some aspects of a terrifying scenario for street children during the pandemic. As small businesses have shut up shop in the lockdown, jobs that earned street dwellers a pittance, like carrying goods in markets or selling food to drivers, have vanished. Pavement dwellers are ordered to stay in makeshift structures and can not look for food.
Megan Lees-McCowan, head of Africa programmes at Street Child, said she feared Covid-19 would drive more children to the streets across Africa as schools shut and desperate families looked for alternative incomes.
“For us, there is also the spectre of the past,” said Lees-McCowan, recalling how during the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, some children were abandoned by destitute families, and shunned by communities that suspected they carried the disease.
Duncan Ross, CEO of UK-based StreetInvest, says: “The vulnerability of this group will go up [in the crisis], their need for services will go up and isolation won’t protect them. The danger is that many people see them even more as diseased and criminal. Anecdotally, this is already happening.”
In South Africa, private security firms hired to clear the streets were taking homeless youth to temporary shelters that lack qualified workers to look after them. Mpendulo Nyembe and his team at uMthombo in Durban, citing one encounter between a group of 11 youth and heavily armed guards.
“They are terrified. We are terrified. The people dealing with them have no idea who these children are, of their backgrounds.”
“People’s survival is suddenly in jeopardy. Many families that live on the streets have been there for generations. They have no stocks and could starve,” says Paul Sunder Singh, founder of NGO Karunalaya in Chennai, India.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/apr/15/will-we-die-of-hunger-how-covid-19-lockdowns-imperil-street-children
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