The Right to Shelter

Unicef has estimated that there are between 100 and 150 million street children in the world What is known is that 44 million children in the world are fully or partially orphaned, and for many of them the death of a parent sets off a cascade of events that lands them in the street

A common factor at work with children in street situations is violence – the economic violence of extreme poverty and the violence of war and natural disaster, violence which causes social breakdown Violence sends them to the street, and once living on the street, children are at risk of cumulative trauma The right to a “standard of living adequate for the child’s mental, spiritual, moral and social development” properly due to children, according to Article 27 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is violated What this really means is not to have food, shelter, safety, sanitation, education and a future

Street children must find a way to feed themselves, and that imperative frequently leads them to encounters with the law, for petty crimes or begging in urban downtown areas. Sometimes the police do more than simply move street kids along Police and death squads in Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil and the Philippines have been known to use summary execution as a means of dealing with the problem of street children (see for example the 1999 judgment against Guatemala in the Case of the Street Children) By virtue of their extreme vulnerability, street children are at risk for the worst forms of child labor Survival sex is common, as is getting sucked into the drugs trade The carceral system in the United States is the largest in the world – a significant proportion of U S inmates charged with drugs offenses got their start in the drugs trade as children on the streets In this country and in many others, a war on drugs ends up being a war on vulnerable people, hardening social attitudes towards them

Rehabilitation and reintegration of street children is notoriously difficult, and often heartbreaking Housing alone is inadequate, schooling alone is inadequate, vocational training and counseling alone is inadequate. The harm caused to children forced to fend for themselves on the street requires a panoply of social services and remediation It is much easier to prevent children from living on the streets, than it is to fix the damage later In the wake of the economic wreckage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, Unicef recommends a five-pronged approach for a long-term preventative solution to the problem of children abandoned to the streets (Transformative Action to Accelerate Results for Children in Street Situations in the Decade of Action 2020-2030), which includes poverty reduction, social protection, prevention of family separation, protection of children from violence and exploitation, equal access to justice, quality and inclusive education and making cities safer for children.