I regularly teach at an NGO called Kousha
Children Organization in Baharestan located in a very poor area of Tehran and I
can never close my eyes on the things I see on the way. I see beggars, addicts
and even the children who live on the street.
Street children are homeless children who
live on the street in particular, those that are not taken care of by parents
or other adults. Street children live in abandoned buildings, containers,
automobiles, parks, or on the street itself. Tehran the largest city of IRAN
has one of the highest rates of street children in the country.
There are significant numbers of children,
Afghan and Iranian, working as street vendors in Tehran and other cities and
not attending school because their parents are not able to pay the expenses.
Recently the government representatives told the UN Committee on the Rights of
the Children that there were less than 60 thousand street children in the
country.
Working children, children living on the
streets and children without complete personal documents, particularly refugee
children with bi-national parents, have reduced access to schools. Recently
Iranian parliament passed a law which prohibits undocumented children attending
the schools or has to pay high tuition for them and it is concerned that many
of these immigrants do not have steady income to pay for their children to go
to schools. It is also concerned that refugee children are currently only being
enrolled in schools if their parents have registered with the authorities as
mentioned, and that the enrolment of refugee children comes from the pocket of
these parents. In many places managed by NGOs such as Kousha Organization,
based in downtown of Tehran, volunteers and teachers help immigrant kids to
make them go to school even if they don't get any diploma from the government.
Tehran has 35,000 to 50,000 children forced
by adults mostly parents or closed relative to live and beg on the street or to
work as slave labourers in sweat shops. The death rate among street children is
high. The cause of their deaths varies from malnutrition to diseases brought on
by unsanitary conditions and the government is helpless fighting these criminal
activities. Also the adults who exploit the children often train them for
criminal activities, including selling illegal drugs and alcohol or providing
them to others for sexual activities.
The majority of these children had run away
from their homes to escape social pressures (because the parents lost jobs,
addicted to drugs or involved in illegal activities).
Fortunately there are many Non-Governmental
Organizations in Iran and they never hesitate to support any street child but
unfortunately the system of their lives forces these children to go back to the
streets and do everything except normal things that kids their age do. The
child inside these kids is dead and who's to blame?
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