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PROTECTING STREET CHILDREN: VIGILANTES OR

THE RULE OF LAW?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HUMAN 

RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

SEPTEMBER 13, 2005

Serial No. 109–101

Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/international—relations 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 

HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois, Chairman 

JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, 

Vice Chairman 

DAN BURTON, Indiana 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

PETER T. KING, New York 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado 

RON PAUL, Texas 

DARRELL ISSA, California 

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona 

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia 

MARK GREEN, Wisconsin 

JERRY WELLER, Illinois 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

THADDEUS G. MCCOTTER, Michigan 

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

MICHAEL MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

TOM LANTOS, California 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey 

ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey 

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

BARBARA LEE, California 

JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York 

EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon 

SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

ADAM B. SCHIFF, California 

DIANE E. WATSON, California 

ADAM SMITH, Washington 

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota 

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky 

DENNIS A. CARDOZA, California 

THOMAS E. MOONEY, SR., Staff Director/General Counsel 

ROBERT R. KING, Democratic Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL

OPERATIONS

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman 

THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado 

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona 

MARK GREEN, Wisconsin 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, 

Vice Chairman 

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey 

BARBARA LEE, California 

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

DIANE E. WATSON, California 

MARY M. NOONAN, Subcommittee Staff Director 

GREG SIMPKINS, Subcommittee Professional Staff Member 

NOELLE LUSANE, Democratic Professional Staff Member 

SHERI A. RICKERT, Subcommittee Professional Staff Member and Counsel 

LINDSEY M. PLUMLEY, Staff Associate 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

Mr. David Denehy, Director of Strategic Planning and External Affairs, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, U.S. Department of State ..... 6

Mr. Lloyd Feinberg, Manager, Displaced Children and Orphans Fund, U.S. 

Agency for International Development .............................................................. 11

Lord David Alton, House of Lords, United Kingdom of Great Britain and 

Northern Ireland .................................................................................................. 68

Father Shay Cullen, Founder, PREDA Foundation, Philippines ........................ 87

Ms. Teresa Santos, Network Coordinator, Rede Viva-RJ, Brazil ........................ 96

Mr. Andy Sexton, International Coordinator, Children at Risk, OAS!S International ................................................................................................................. 107

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

The Honorable Christopher H. Smith, a Representative in Congress from 

the State of New Jersey and Chairman, Subcommittee on Africa, Global 

Human Rights and International Operations: Prepared statement ................ 3

Mr. David Denehy: Prepared statement ................................................................ 9

Mr. Lloyd Feinberg: Excerpt of 2004–2005 Displaced Chidren and Orphans 

Fund ...................................................................................................................... 13

Prepared statement .............................................................................................. 53

Lord David Alton: Prepared statement .................................................................. 76

Father Shay Cullen: Prepared statement .............................................................. 90

Ms. Teresa Santos: Prepared statement ................................................................ 99

Mr. Andy Sexton: Prepared statement .................................................................. 110

(1)

PROTECTING STREET CHILDREN: 

VIGILANTES OR THE RULE OF LAW? 

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS

AND INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS,

COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:03 a.m. in room 

2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H. Smith 

(Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. SMITH. The Subcommittee will come to order. Good afternoon 

to everyone. 

Today’s hearing of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human 

Rights and International Operations will study the terrible situation facing millions of children across the world who are forced to 

live on the streets and what the United States and other countries 

are doing, can do, or should do, to address the problem. The hearing will focus particular attention on the situation in Brazil, the 

Philippines, Uganda and Zimbabwe. 

Street children are, tragically, found in almost every country in 

the world. They are part of a vast population of children worldwide 

who live in abject poverty and are particularly vulnerable to abuse. 

They are murdered by vigilantes who are, in many cases, policemen charged with enforcing the law and protecting human life. Instead, police and other vigilantes violate the law in the worst way 

imaginable, out of a perverted impulse to eliminate petty crime. 

Street children are used by criminal gangs and then are often disposed of when they have outlived their usefulness. They are trafficked and exploited, sexually and for forced labor. Many end up as 

child soldiers. Many others are incarcerated in adult prisons, where 

they are victimized even further. 

Worldwide, street children number in the many millions, but no 

one really knows how many there are. An estimate reportedly 

made by the UN Children’s Fund in the 1990s of 100 million street 

children worldwide is often cited. But the true number is unknown. 

It could be far worse now. 

Civil wars and the HIV/AIDS epidemic continually swell the 

numbers of street children, particularly in Africa. In the past, the 

typical street children were boys 10–14 years old. Now the age 

ranges are drifting downward, and more and more girls are being 

found on the streets. Female street children face particular problems. They are more likely to be domestically and sexually abused, 

2

and they are more likely to become prostitutes, increasing their 

health risks, including that of HIV/AIDS. 

Unlike many of the pressing human rights problems we confront, 

the problem of street children is rarely the result of the intentional 

malevolence of dictators or tyrannical regimes, although this does 

occur. Rather, some of the very worst situations exist in democratic 

nations, which are close friends. Like the worldwide plague of trafficking in women, men and children, the problems of street children have reached epidemic proportions because good people will 

not confront this evil or do enough to deal with it. 

Faced with so many other intractable problems of poverty, unemployment, and weak or nonexistent institutions of civil society, 

many struggling countries and their citizens throw up their hands 

in despair and try to pay little attention to the plight of street children. In the meantime, not only are the lives of their most precious 

resource, their children, being destroyed, their futures as prosperous and democratic rule of law societies are also put in jeopardy. No nation can afford to allow its police to become murderers 

or its children to become outlaws and hope to become or remain a 

stable, prosperous, democratic society. Ultimately, this is a security 

issue for all. 

Many street children are orphans, or abandoned, or come from 

desperately poor families. I recently was in Timisoara and saw 

firsthand a number of street children in that city in Romania. But 

I also saw some of the good things that Peter Dugulescu and others 

were doing to try to reach out and provide a safe haven for those 

children. 

Some children are estranged from their families. Many, perhaps 

the large majority, do not attend school regularly. In order to survive on the streets, they must beg, steal or find some other means 

of earning money by scavenging or other menial work, helping 

street traders, shining shoes, washing car windshields. Many are 

lured by false promises of security and financial gain by older individuals into illicit prostitution, dangerous forced labor or drug trafficking and violent crime. 

What can we do? 

The first rule must be to do no harm. Police and public authorities must be trained to deal with children on the street and to protect them, and those who mistreat or murder them must be punished. Experience has shown that if governments make it clear that 

crimes by policemen will be punished, the incidence of those crimes 

radically diminishes. Ending impunity is therefore a fundamental 

prerequisite for all other progress, and the U.S. Government and 

international organizations must never neglect to press this issue. 

We shall hear today how the State Department monitors the plight 

of street children, and what it is doing to convince our partners to 

stop crimes against street children. 

The next task must be to ameliorate the situation of the children 

who find themselves on the streets. Society, through governmental 

and private institutions, must strive to meet the current needs of 

these children, so they can receive educations and live productive, 

useful and happy lives. Local governments often have limited programs and resources to address the special needs of street children. 

Developed democracies can assist, certainly with direct material asVerDate Mar 21 2002 12:53 Jan 18, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\AGI\091305\23435.000 HINTREL1 PsN: SHIRL
3

sistance, but perhaps, most of all, through institution building. 

USAID and our NGO communities will discuss what they are doing 

and what more can be done. 

Our Administration witnesses today will be Mr. David Denehy, 

Director of Strategic Planning and External Affairs for the State 

Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, 

which has, for many years, kept the attention of the world focused 

on the human rights violations against street children; and Mr. 

Lloyd Feinberg, Manager of the Displaced Children and Orphans 

Fund of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which 

works directly with foreign governments and NGOs to save street 

children. 

On our second panel will be the distinguished Lord David Alton 

of the House of Lords of United Kingdom of Great Britain and 

Northern Ireland, who has heroically defended the fundamental 

human rights of all without exception for many years: The unborn, 

the elderly, the sick, the handicapped, children, prisoners, and people of faith everywhere. 

Our third panel will include Father Shay Cullen, Founder of the 

PREDA Foundation in the Philippines; Ms. Teresa Santos, Network Coordinator for Rede Viva-RJ, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Mr. 

Andy Sexton, International Coordinator, Children at Risk, OAS!S 

International. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY AND CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS

The Subcommittee will come to order, and good morning to everyone. 

Today’s hearing of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations will study the terrible situation facing millions of children 

across the world who are forced to live on the streets, and what the U.S. and other 

countries are doing, can do, or should do, to address the problem. The hearing will 

focus particular attention the situation in Brazil, the Philippines and Uganda and 

Zimbabwe. 

Street children are, tragically, found in almost every country in the world. They 

are part of a vast population of children worldwide who live in abject poverty and 

are particularly vulnerable to abuse. They are murdered by vigilantes, who are in 

many cases policeman charged with enforcing the law and protecting human life. 

Instead, police and other vigilantes violate the law in the worst way imaginable, out 

of a perverted impulse to eliminate petty crime. Street children are used by criminal 

gangs and then often disposed of when they have outlived their usefulness. They 

are trafficked and exploited, sexually and for forced labor. Many end up as child soldiers. Many others are incarcerated in adult prisons, where they are victimized even 

further. 

Worldwide street children number in the many millions, but no one really knows 

how many there are. An estimate reportedly made by the U.N. Children’s Fund 

(UNICEF) in the 1990s of 100 million street children worldwide is often cited, but 

the true number is unknown. It could be far worse now. Civil wars and the HIV/

AIDS epidemic continually swell the numbers of street children, particularly in Africa. In the past the typical street children were boys 10–14 years old. Now the age 

ranges are drifting downward, and more and more girls are being found on the 

streets. Female street children face particular problems. They are more likely to be 

domestically and sexually abused, and they are more likely to become prostitutes 

increasing their health risks including that of HIV/AIDS. 

Unlike many of the pressing human rights problems we confront, the problem of 

street children is rarely the result of the intentional malevolence of dictators or tyrannical regimes, although this does occur. Rather, some of the very worst situations exist in democratic nations, which are close friends. Like the worldwide plague 

of trafficking in women, men and children, the problems of street children have 

4

reached epidemic proportions because good people will not confront this evil or do 

enough to deal with it. 

Faced with so many other intractable problems of poverty, unemployment and 

weak or nonexistent institutions of civil society, many struggling countries and their 

citizens throw up their hands in despair and try to pay little attention to the plight 

of street children. In the meantime, not only are the lives of their most precious 

resource, their children, being destroyed, their futures as prosperous and democratic 

rule of law societies are also put in jeopardy. No nation can afford to allow its police 

to become murderers, or its children to become outlaws, and hope to become or remain a stable, prosperous, democratic society. Ultimately, this is a security issue for 

all. 

Many street children are orphans, or abandoned, or come from desperately poor 

families. Some are estranged from their families. Many, perhaps the large majority, 

do not attend school regularly. In order to survive on the streets, they must beg, 

steal or find some other means of earning money by scavenging, or other menial 

work helping street traders, shining shoes, washing car windshields. Many are lured 

by false promises of security and financial gain by older individuals into illicit prostitution, dangerous forced labor, or drug trafficking and violent crime. 

What can we do? 

The first rule must be to do no harm. Police and public authorities must be 

trained to deal with children on the street and to protect them, and those who mistreat or murder them must be punished. Experience has shown that if governments 

make it clear that crimes by policemen will be punished, the incidence of those 

crimes radically diminishes. Ending impunity is therefore a fundamental prerequisite for all other progress, and the U.S. government and International Organizations must never neglect to press this issue. We shall hear today how the State 

Department monitors the plight of Street Children, and what it is doing to convince 

our partners to stop crimes against street children. 

The next task must be to ameliorate the situation of the children who find themselves on the streets. Society, through governmental and private institutions, must 

strive to meet the current needs of these children, so they can receive educations 

and live productive, useful and happy lives. Local governments often have limited 

programs and resources to address the special needs of street children. Developed 

democracies can assist, certainly with direct material assistance, but perhaps most 

of all through institution building. USAID and our NGO communities will discuss 

what they are doing and what more can be done. 

Our administration witnesses today will be Mr. David Denehy, Director of Strategic Planning and External Affairs, for the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, which has for many years kept the attention of the 

world focused on the human rights violations against street children; and Mr. Lloyd 

Feinberg, Manager of the Displaced Children and Orphans Fund of the U.S. Agency 

for International Development, which works directly with foreign governments and 

NGO’s to save street children. 

On our second panel will be the distinguished Lord David Alton, of the House of 

Lords of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, who has heroically 

defended the fundamental human rights of all without exception for many years: the 

unborn, the elderly, the sick, the handicapped, children, prisoners, and people of 

faith everywhere. 

Our third panel will include Father Shay Cullen, Founder of the PREDA Foundation in the Philippines; Ms. Teresa Santos, Network Coordinator for Rede Viva-RJ, 

Brazil; and Mr. Andy Sexton, International Coordinator, Children at Risk, OASIS 

International.

Mr. SMITH. I would like to turn to Ms. McCollum if she has any 

opening remarks. 

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chair. In light of the fact I will 

not be able to stay quite as long as I wanted, I would like to get 

right to the testimony so I can hear. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Pitts. 

Mr. PITTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will submit a longer 

statement for the record, but first let me thank you for holding today’s hearing entitled ‘‘Protecting Street Children: Vigilantes Or 

the Rule of Law?’’

With the many issues facing our world today, there is not nearly 

enough attention paid to the issue of street children. Yet, as we 

5

will hear from today’s witnesses, it is vital that we address the 

needs and problems of street children as the issues with which 

they deal touch on many issues of concern to the general public and 

governments and the international community; issues like trafficking in persons, drug use, sexual abuse, gangs, violence, breakdown of communities and societies, forcible conscription of child 

soldiers, the spread of HIV/AIDS, and national security issues. 

They are all part of the many issues facing street children. 

UN statistics reflect that there are approximately 100 million 

street children in the world today, including the United States. 

So thank you to today’s witnesses for your testimony, and for the 

insight that you will share regarding this important issue. I would 

like to extend a special welcome to my good friend, Lord David 

Alton, and to Father Shay Cullen, Ms. Teresa Santos, and Mr. 

Andy Saxton, who have traveled great distances to be here today. 

Thank you. I yield back. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Pitts. 

We are joined by our first two witnesses, experts in the field, including David Denehy, who was appointed Acting Deputy Assistant 

Secretary of the Bureau of Human Rights and Labor in July 2005. 

Prior to his appointment, Mr. Denehy served as Senior Advisor to 

the Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor 

since November 2004. In this capacity he has also acted as Director 

of the Bureau’s Office of Strategic and External Affairs. 

Previously, Mr. Denehy served in a variety of positions within 

the State Department. In 2003, for example, Mr. Denehy was an 

advisor to Ambassador Paul Bremer on political transition in Iraq, 

and Deputy Director of the Office of Democracy and Governance in 

the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. 

Lloyd Feinberg is the manager of USAID’s Displaced Children 

and Orphans Fund, Leahy War Victims Fund, and the Victims of 

Torture Fund. He is also the agency’s Disabilities Coordinator. 

His primary responsibility is the oversight and management of 

a portfolio of the three special funds which provide over $35 million 

annually in development assistance. Overall, the program currently 

supports over 85 programs in more than 45 countries in Asia and 

the Near East, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Central and Latin 

American regions. 

Mr. Feinberg began his international career as a Peace Corps 

volunteer in the Philippines in the mid-1960s, and has over 40 

years experience managing social sector programs in developing 

countries. 

After the Peace Corps, and before joining USAID in 1984, he 

lived in and managed NGO development programs in Indonesia, 

Ethiopia, Nepal and Ecuador. From 1980 to 1983, he served as 

project manager on the World Bank Transmigration II in Indonesia. He is also an expert adviser on the board of the ICRC Special Fund for the Disabled. 

Mr. Denehy, if you could begin. 

6

STATEMENT OF MR. DAVID DENEHY, DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC PLANNING AND EXTERNAL AFFAIRS, BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS AND LABOR, U.S. DEPARTMENT 

OF STATE 

Mr. DENEHY. Thank you. Chairman Smith and Members of the 

Subcommittee, thank you for holding this hearing on the plight of 

street children. Your concern is appreciated. The Department 

shares this concern and commends you for your efforts on this 

issue. 

Each year the Department submits the Country Reports on 

Human Rights Practices to this Committee. Section 5 of each country’s chapter includes our reporting on children. While we submit 

these documents each February, our Embassies and posts monitor 

and report on acts of discrimination and persecution against children throughout the year. The Department instructs posts covering 

countries with large populations of displaced children, including 

refugees or street children, to follow these issues closely. 

As our officers prepare these reports, they draw on many sources 

of information, including firsthand experiences and reports provided by human rights groups. I am sure you will learn much from 

members of the second panel as we benefit regularly from the work 

of these NGOs. 

Lord Alton has also asked to meet with us later this week and 

we look forward to his visit. 

My message to all these groups is to work with us and communicate with us so we can all improve our reporting and activities 

on behalf of children. 

I am also pleased to be joined today by Lloyd Feinberg, who 

heads the Displaced Children and Orphans Fund at the United 

States Agency for International Development. In my testimony, I 

will describe several of the most pressing issues facing children living in the streets. Mr. Feinberg will then describe aids program designed to benefit children as well as some of the lessons he has 

learned in this endeavor. 

A survey of the Country Reports suggests that children end up 

on the streets for a variety of reasons, including conflict, poverty, 

and HIV/AIDS. Some are exploited in prostitution or subjected to 

other forms of human trafficking and others face abuse by security 

forces and citizens. Too many children’s stories are never told and 

too many continue to face the streets alone. 

Today I would like to draw your attention to the stories of three 

children who are forced to face the harsh realities of their countries’ streets at a young age. 

In May, DRL officers visited several refugee camps along the 

Chad-Sudan border to assess violence in Darfur. During this trip, 

they were struck at the number of children occupying each camp. 

On average, over 95 percent of the population in these camps are 

women and children under the age of 10. Some of these children 

are accompanied by parents. Some have no idea where their families may be or even if they are still alive. 

During one such visit, officers encountered a group of children 

who were given paper and crayons by a local NGO. The officers received disturbing drawings by children as young as 5 that conveyed 

terrific acts of violence. They included acts of torture and savage 

7

killings that took place in their homes, drawings of men being beaten and beheaded and women, sometimes their mothers and sisters, 

being gang-raped. 

Keep in mind that these children were reached by NGO programming. The larger picture for isolated street children in Sudan and 

those detained by government for committing crimes is often much 

bleaker. The Sudanese Government funds reformation camps for 

children detained by police. The living conditions are primitive and 

the camps offer poor health care and education. It is typical for us 

to find that racial, ethnic or religious identification of street children place a significant role in their treatment. 

In Sudan, all of the children in camps, including non-Muslims, 

must study the Koran, and there is pressure on non-Muslims to 

convert to Islam. 

The detention situation in the Philippines is also grim. Approximately 1,500 Filipino children, most incarcerated for crimes such 

as common theft or substance abuse, are currently incarcerated 

among the adult inmate population where they are vulnerable to 

sexual abuse, recruitment into gangs and forced labor. 

In Brazil, credible locally-based human rights groups report the 

existence of organized death squads linked to police forces that target suspected criminals and persons considered undesirable, such 

as street children in almost every state. 

Male teenagers in the Sudanese camps are often conscripted into 

the People’s Defense Forces. Conscripts face significant hardship 

and abuse in military service, often serving on the front line. There 

are also reports that abducted, homeless and displaced children are 

discouraged from speaking languages other than Arabic or practicing religions other than Islam. 

Timothy’s story was provided by a NGO that collects and shares 

invaluable human rights information with my office. Timothy, a 14-

year-old boy in Uganda, was one of the many child soldiers in his 

country. He remembers his first time on the front line. Timothy recalls the other side started firing and the commander ‘‘ordered us 

to run through the bullets. I panicked. I saw others falling down 

dead around me. The commanders were beating us for not running 

or trying to crouch down. They said if we fall down, we would be 

shot and killed by the soldiers.’’

Between 32,000 and 52,000 children known as ‘‘night commuters’’ travel from conflict areas across Uganda or IDP camps to 

urban centers each night to avoid abduction by the Lord’s Resistance Army. Last year, the government cooperated with NGOs to establish shelters for such children. However, children also sleep 

under balconies or on the grounds of schools, churches and hospitals. Conditions range from harsh to adequate. Many credible reports also confirmed that displaced girls are involved in prostitution. 

Sadly, our Country Reports describe similar situations elsewhere 

in the world. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, between 25,000 

and 50,000 child refugees, war orphans, and other children widely 

perceived to be street thugs are accused of witchcraft or sorcery. 

They live on the streets throughout the country and engage in 

petty crime, begging or prostitution. These circumstances are not 

rare and are closer to those described in our reports of children in 

8

Angola, where approximately 1,500 street children in Rwanda 

shine shoes, wash cars, carry water, beg, prostitute and often resort to petty crime just to survive. 

My third story comes from a new member of my office who is 

here with me today. He traveled to Peru in 2003 to specifically 

work with street children, some as young as age 4. In addition to 

encountering stark police and public brutality toward street children, he was struck by the contrast he observed between Peruvian 

perceptions of these children and his experiences of working with 

them. Street children in Peru are commonly referred to as ‘‘piranhas’’ and, if detained by police, are often labeled as such with a 

small fish tattooed on their hand just above the thumb. Contrary 

to fears that street children are dangerous and inhumane, as their 

tattoos might suggest, Jacob found the only striking difference between the street children and the others was the lack of familial 

support. Instead, these children turned to each other or to others 

on the street for this support. 

Parentless and surrounded by oppressors, poverty and crime, 

these children need tools and support to lead productive lives. 

In Peru, largely because of widespread poverty, approximately 

one-third of all school-age children and adolescents work rather 

than attend school. Children living in poverty average only 7.8 

years of education and about half of those who go to primary school 

complete high school. Approximately 25 percent of children under 

the age of 5 are malnourished, and violence against children, trafficking of children, and informal child labor remain serious problems. 

The Government of Peru, however, has shown a commitment to 

children’s well-being. The government provides free compulsory 

education through secondary school, new laws more closely define 

trafficking in persons, criminalize Internet pornography and sexual 

tourism involving children, and provide punishments for those who 

derive financial benefit from these activities. Penalties for pimps 

and clients of underage prostitutes range from 4 to 8 years. 

In March, the government formed a permanent, ministerial-level 

Multi-Sectoral Committee (MSC) to work on the issue of trafficking 

in persons. The committee is chaired by the Ministry of Interior 

and includes representatives from 10 government ministries and 

agencies, three international organizations, and five national organizations. 

The situation is only bleaker in countries where governments do 

not put time and energy into programs for children or even worse, 

where governments contribute to lifestyles that deny these children 

dignity and their basic right to live a healthy life. While it saddens 

me to report that this is the state of the world, we would like to 

thank the Committee for holding this hearing today to call attention to the plight of street children across the globe. I am sure Mr. 

Feinberg will provide a clear picture of what assistance our Government is providing to help address these problems through the 

Displaced Children and Orphans Fund at USAID. 

Once again, we look forward to working with the Committee to 

elevate this important issue. Thank you for your time. I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Denehy follows:]

9

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MR. DAVID DENEHY, DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC PLANNING

AND EXTERNAL AFFAIRS, BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS AND LABOR, U.S. 

DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Chairman Smith, Mr. Payne, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for 

holding this hearing on the plight of street children across the globe. Your concern 

is appreciated. The State Department shares this concern and commends you for 

your efforts on this issue. 

Each year the Department submits the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices to this Committee. Section 5 of each country’s chapter includes our reporting 

on children. While we submit these documents each February, our embassies and 

posts monitor and report on acts of discrimination and persecution against children 

throughout the year. The Department instructs posts covering countries with large 

populations of displaced children—including refugees or street children—to follow 

these issues. 

As our officers prepare these reports they draw on many sources of information, 

including first-hand experiences and reports provided by human rights groups. I am 

sure you will learn much from members of the second panel, as we benefit regularly 

from the work of NGOs. Lord Alton has also asked to meet us later this week, and 

we look forward to his visit. My message to all these groups is to work with us and 

communicate with us, so we all can improve our reporting and activities on behalf 

of the children. 

I am also pleased to be joined today by Lloyd Feinberg who heads the Displaced 

Children and Orphan’s Fund at the United States Agency for International Development. In my testimony I will describe several of the most pressing issues facing children living in the streets. Mr. Feinberg will then describe USAID’s program designed to benefit children, as well as some of the lessons he has learned in this endeavor. 

A survey of the Country Reports suggests that children end up on the streets for 

a variety of reasons, including conflict, poverty, and HIV/AIDS. Some are exploited 

in prostitution or are subjected to other forms of human trafficking, and others face 

abuse by security forces and citizens. Too many children’s stories are never told, and 

too many continue to face the streets alone. Today, I would like to draw your attention to the stories of three children who were forced to face the harsh realities of 

their countries streets at a very young age. 

In May, DRL officers visited several refugee camps along the Chad/Sudan border 

to assess the violence in Darfur. During this trip they were struck at the number 

of children occupying each camp. On average, over 95 percent of the population in 

these camps are women, and children under the age of 10. Some of these children 

are accompanied by a parent, and some have no idea where their families may be, 

or even if they are still alive. During one such visit, officers encountered a group 

of children who were given paper and crayons by a local NGO. The officers received 

disturbing drawings by children as young as 5 years of age that conveyed acts of 

violence. They included acts of torture and savage killings that took place in their 

homes by the Jinjaweed, drawings of men being beaten and beheaded, and women, 

sometimes their mothers and sisters, being ganged raped. 

Keep in mind that these were children reached by NGO programming, whereas 

the larger picture for isolated street children in Sudan, and those detained by the 

government for committing crimes, is often much bleaker. 

The Sudanese government funds ‘‘reformation camps’’ for children detained by police. The living conditions are primitive, and the camps offer poor health care and 

education. It is typical for us to find that racial, ethnic, or religious identification 

of street children plays a significant role in their treatment. In Sudan, all of the 

children in camps, including non-Muslims, must study the Koran, and there is pressure on non Muslims to convert to Islam. 

The detention situation in the Philippines is also grim. Approximately 1,500 Filipino children, most incarcerated for crimes such as common theft or substance 

abuse, are currently incarcerated among the adult inmate population where they 

are vulnerable to sexual abuse, recruitment into gangs, and forced labor. 

And in Brazil, credible, locally-based human rights groups report the existence of 

organized death squads linked to police forces that target suspected criminals and 

persons considered ‘‘undesirable’’—such as street children—in almost every state. 

Male teenagers in the Sudanese camps (and, in the south, some girls) are often 

conscripted into the People’s Defense Forces. Conscripts face significant hardship 

and abuse in military service, often serving on the frontline. There are also reports 

that abducted, homeless, and displaced children are discouraged from speaking languages other than Arabic or practicing religions other than Islam. 

10

Timothy’s story was provided by an NGO that collects and shares invaluable 

human rights information with my office. Timothy—a fourteen year old boy in 

Uganda—was one of the many child soldiers in his country. He remembers his first 

time on the front line. Timothy recalls, ‘‘The other side started firing, and the commander ordered us to run through the bullets. I panicked. I saw others falling down 

dead around me. The commanders were beating us for not running, for trying to 

crouch down. They said if we fall down, we would be shot and killed by the soldiers.’’

Between 32,000 and 52,000 children known as ‘‘night commuters’’ travel from conflict areas in Uganda, or from internally displaced persons camps each night to 

urban centers to avoid abduction by the Lord’s Resistance Army. In March 2004, 

the U.N. estimated that nearly 18,800 children commute nightly into Gulu town, 

11,000 into Kitgum, and 11,000 into a Kalongo Hospital in Pader District. Last year, 

the government cooperated with NGOs to establish shelters for such children in 

tented dormitories and other semi-permanent structures. However, children also 

sleep under balconies or on the grounds of schools, churches, and hospitals. Conditions range from harsh to adequate. Many credible reports also confirm that many 

displaced girls are involved in prostitution. 

Sadly, our Country Reports describe similar situations elsewhere in the world. In 

the Democratic Republic of the Congo, between 25,000 and 50,000 child refugees, 

war orphans, and other children, widely perceived to be street thugs, are accused 

of witchcraft or sorcery. They live on the streets throughout the country, and engage 

in petty crime, begging, and/or prostitution. These circumstances are not rare, and 

are closer to those described in our country reports of children in Luanda, Angola 

where approximately 1,500 street children shine shoes, wash cars, carry water, beg, 

prostitute, and often resort to petty crime to survive. 

Our third story, comes from a new member of my office with me today. He traveled to Peru in 2003 specifically to work with street children as young as four. In 

addition to encountering stark police and public brutality towards street children, 

he was struck by the contrast he observed between some Peruvian perceptions of 

these children and his direct experiences working with them. Street children are 

commonly referred to as ‘‘piranhas’’ and, if they are detained by the police, are often 

labeled as such with a small fish tattooed on their hand, just above their thumb. 

Contrary to fears that street children are dangerous and inhuman, as the tattoos 

might suggest, Jacob found the only striking difference between the street children 

and others was the lack of family support for them. Instead, these children turned 

to each other or to others on the streets for this support. Parentless, and surrounded 

by oppressors, poverty, and crime, these children need tools and support to lead a 

productive life. 

In Peru, largely because of widespread poverty, approximately one-third of all 

school-age children and adolescents work rather than attend school. Children living 

in poverty average only 7.8 years of education, and about half of those who go to 

primary school complete high school. Approximately 25 percent of children under 

age 5 are malnourished, and violence against children, trafficking of children, and 

informal child labor also remain serious problems. 

The government of Peru, however, has shown commitment to children’s wellbeing. The government provides free, compulsory education through secondary 

school, new laws more closely define trafficking in persons, criminalize Internet 

child pornography and sexual tourism involving children, and provide punishments 

for those who derive financial benefit from these activities. Penalties for pimps and 

clients of underage prostitutes range from 4 to 8 years in prison. In March, the Government formed a permanent, ministerial-level Multi-Sectoral Committee (MSC) to 

work on the issue of trafficking in persons. The Committee is chaired by the Ministry of the Interior and includes representatives from 10 government ministries and 

agencies, 3 international organizations, and 5 national organizations. 

The situation is only bleaker in countries where governments do not put time or 

energy into programs for street children, or even worse, where governments contribute to the lifestyles that deny these children of dignity, and their basic right to 

live a healthy life. The situations are worse in the Democratic Republic of the Congo 

where police and street children collude, where street children pay police officers for 

the right to sleep in abandoned buildings, and sometimes pay a percentage of goods 

stolen in large markets, as violence against street children is on the rise. 

While it saddens me to report that this is the state of the world, we would like 

to thank the committee for holding this hearing today to call attention to the plight 

of street children across the globe. I am sure Mr. Fienberg will provide a clear picture of what assistance our government is providing to help address these problems 

through the Displaced Children and Orphan’s Fund at USAID. Once again, we look 

forward to working with the Committee to elevate these important issues.

11

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Denehy, thank you very much for your statement 

and for the fine work you do on behalf of the street children. It is 

very much appreciated. 

Mr. Feinberg. 

STATEMENT OF MR. LLOYD FEINBERG, MANAGER, DISPLACED 

CHILDREN AND ORPHANS FUND, U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

Mr. FEINBERG. Thank you, Mr. Denehy. 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I am honored 

to be able to sit before you again. You may recall that on June 23, 

Dr. Danuta Lockett and I had the privilege to exchange views with 

the Subcommittee on the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) programs for victims of torture. 

In this instance, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to 

share with you information on what USAID is doing to prevent the 

exploitation as well as to protect vulnerable children, and specifically those children who do not enjoy the care and protection of a 

family or family-like environment. I look forward to also hearing 

from the presentations of our very distinguished experts and guests 

on the other two panels. 

I would like to suggest at the start, however, that while many 

of our activities are USAID activities addressing the issues of socalled ‘‘street children,’’ I believe it is important to ensure that we 

not allow ourselves to pigeonhole or stovepipe any children into categories which might unintentionally serve to undermine the development or funding of appropriate and effective programs that are 

designed to address the needs of vulnerable children. 

For example, most of the activities that the Displaced Children 

and Orphans Fund supports involve children who could be included 

under a number of descriptors: Children who are separated from 

their families as a result of conflict, such as in northern Uganda; 

others who have served as child soldiers or as slaves to combatants; others are orphaned or otherwise affected by HIV/AIDS; and 

an unconscionable number of children worldwide suffer labor, sexual or other forms of inhumane exploitation, including trafficking. 

I would just like to say that one of the most heinous and objectionable phenomena that I have encountered and which USAID is 

trying to address is the widening practice in Angola and in the two 

Congos of the practice whereby children are accused of being witches and then are subject to cruel exorcisms that are tantamount to 

torture. 

At the present time, the Displaced Children and Orphans Fund, 

which I manage, provides financial as well as technical support in 

over 19 countries. We have programmed more than $160 million 

since the Fund’s inception in 1989, and in fiscal year 2005, we have 

obligated approximately $14 million to a variety of programs 

around the world, many of which do address the issue of street 

children. In 15 of these countries, we do support street children’s 

programs. 

Besides the significant programs that support street children, accused witches, and other vulnerable children that I alluded to earlier in the two Congos and in Angola, we also support significant 

NGO activities that help street children in such countries as AfVerDate Mar 21 2002 12:53 Jan 18, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\AGI\091305\23435.000 HINTREL1 PsN: SHIRL
12

ghanistan, Azerbaijan, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Georgia, Liberia, Indonesia, Northern Uganda, Ukraine, Sri Lanka and Zambia. 

With respect to the activities of some of the other presenters 

today, I would like to mention that in Brazil, for example, we have 

recently completed a 10-year Displaced Children and Orphans 

Fund investment in a major street children’s program in the northeast under a program that was called POMMAR in the impoverished northeast area. That program is now being followed up with 

a highly innovative program that seeks to strengthen youth employability, which is called the Youth Employability Strengthening 

Program, again, in the northeast of Brazil. 

The program in northern Uganda that I alluded to is primarily 

focused on children who had been abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army and those children who are now living in severe condition in camps, which Mr. Denehy had described, and especially the 

children who are the night commuters who are having to seek shelter every night from additional abduction. 

In the mid- to late-1990s, the Displaced Childrens Fund also supported two excellent and innovative street children’s programs, one 

in the Philippines and the other in Thailand. In each of those countries where we have programs, USAID tries to ensure that our support and activities have the greatest potential impact on the greatest number of children. We believe that from the perspective of an 

international public donor agency, we need to strike a healthy balance in order to avoid supporting programs that may have a great 

impact for a relatively small number of children as opposed to programs that may have little or no impact, but might purport to 

reach tens of thousands of children. We have to reach that healthy 

balance and identify an appropriate role for an agency such as the 

U.S. Government’s Agency for International Development. 

In directing our funds, therefore, we try to support activities that 

do the following: First, we try to ensure that every child has access 

to a caring and responsible adult who ideally can provide that child 

with unconditional love and understanding. We try to prioritize our 

interventions that we fund in terms of the age of the children, the 

length of time children might be on the street and, most of all, how 

do we prevent family dissolution that results in street children. We 

try to strengthen human and institutional capacity of indigenous 

child care and protection organizations, both government agencies 

as well as non-government agencies. We support responsible monitoring and evaluation of activities to ensure that our funded grantees employ meaningful outcomes and, wherever possible, measurable impact indicators on the well-being of children. 

We try not to get too hung up on quantitative indicators, which, 

of course, are important. In determining the well-being of children 

we have to look at quality. 

We support collection and sharing of information of successful as 

well as unsuccessful interventions with a view toward strengthening the state-of-the-art and the identification of good and 

replicable approaches and models. And we support the strengthening of national standards and the appropriate roles of government which encourage the involvement of civil society, including 

NGOs, faith-based organizations, and professional and business 

13

communities to incorporate and engage them in child care and protection. Finally, we support and advocate for appropriate host country legal reform in this area. 

I am pleased to be able to provide you with an excerpt of the 

2004–2005 Displaced Children and Orphans Fund, which I think 

each of you have been provided. There are additional copies of the 

overview and the introduction on the press table over there. I 

would also like to bring to your attention the USAID March 2005 

report on our activities of trafficking in persons which is also on 

the table. 

[The information referred to follows:]


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53

Mr. FEINBERG. I would be happy to respond to any questions that 

you or the Members of the Committee wish to ask, and I thank you 

for this opportunity to present you with this information. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Feinberg follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MR. LLOYD FEINBERG, MANAGER, DISPLACED CHILDREN

AND ORPHANS FUND, U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, I am honored to be able to sit 

before you again. You may recall that on June 23, Dr. Danuta Lockett and I had 

the privilege to exchange views with the committee on the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Victims of Torture Fund. 

In this instance, I am pleased to have the opportunity to share with you information on what USAID is doing to prevent as well as protect vulnerable children, and 

specifically those children who do not enjoy the care and protection of a family or 

family-like environment. 

I would like to suggest at the start, however, that while many of our activities 

do indeed address the issues of ‘‘street children,’’ I believe it is important to ensure 

that we not allow ourselves to ‘‘pigeon-hole’’ or ‘‘stovepipe’’ any children into categories which might unintentionally serve to undermine the development or funding 

of appropriate and effective programs that are designed to address their needs. 

For example, most of the activities that the DCOF supports involve children who 

could be included under a number of descriptors.

• Many children are separated from their families as a result of conflict.

• Others have served as child soldiers or slaves to combatants.

• Others are orphaned or otherwise affected by HIV/AIDS.

• An unconscionable number of children worldwide suffer labor, sexual or other 

forms of inhumane exploitation, including human trafficking.

• One of the most heinous and objectionable phenomena that I have encountered (and USAID is addressing) is the widening practice in Angola and the 

two Congos, of accusing children of witchcraft and then subjecting them to 

cruel ‘‘exorcisms’’ that are tantamount to torture.

At the present time, the Displaced Children and Orphans Fund (DCOF), which 

I manage, provides financial as well as technical support in over 19 countries. We 

have programmed more than $160 million since the Fund’s inception in 1989. In FY 

2005, we have obligated approximately $14 million. In 15 of these countries, DCOF 

supports activities that address issues related to street children. 

Besides the significant programs that support street children, accused child-witches and other vulnerable children that I alluded to earlier in the two Congos and 

Angola, USAID also currently supports significant NGO-supported activities that 

help street children in such countries as Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Georgia, Liberia, Indonesia, Uganda, Ukraine, Sri Lanka and 

Zambia. 

With respect to some of the other presenters today, I would like to mention that 

in Brazil, we have recently completed a ten-year DCOF investment in a major street 

children’s program, called POMMAR, in the impoverished northeast sector of the 

country. That program is now being followed up with a highly innovative Youth Employability Strengthening project. 

The program in northern Uganda is primarily focused on children abducted by the 

Lord’s Resistance Army who are now living in severe conditions in camps. 

In the mid to late 1990s, DCOF also supported two excellent and innovative street 

children’s programs in the Philippines (where I was honored to serve as a Peace 

Corps Volunteer in the 1960s) and in Thailand. 

In each of these countries, USAID tries to ensure that our supported activities 

have the greatest potential impact on the greatest number of children. 

We believe that from the perspective of an international donor agency, we need 

to strike a healthy balance in order to avoid supporting programs that may have 

great impact for a relatively small number of children, as well as programs that 

have little or no impact but purport to reach thousands of children. 

In directing our funds, we try to support activities that do the following:

• Ensure that every child has access to a caring and responsible adult who, 

ideally, can provide that child with unconditional love and understanding.

• Prioritize early interventions, in terms of:

• age of the children 

54

• length of time on the street, and 

• prevention of family dissolution.

• Strengthen institutional and human capacity of indigenous, child care and 

protection organizations, both in governmental as well as non-governmental 

sectors.

• Support responsible monitoring and evaluation of activities to ensure that 

USAID funded grantees employ meaningful outcomes, and, where possible, 

measurable impact indicators on the well-being of children.

• Support collection and sharing of information on successful (and unsuccessful) 

interventions with a view to strengthening the state of the art and the identification of replicable approaches and models.

• Support the strengthening of national standards and the appropriate roles of 

government which encourage the involvement of civil society, including 

NGOs, faith-based organizations and professional and business communities 

in child care and protection.

• Support and advocate for appropriate host country legal reform.

I am pleased to be able to provide you with a copy of a full report on the 2004–

2005 DCOF activities. 

I would be happy to respond to any questions that you or the members of your 

committee might like to ask, and I thank you for the opportunity to present you 

with this information.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Feinberg. Thank you for 

this report, and again, for the good work that USAID is doing on 

this as well. 

Let me ask a few opening questions with regards to some basics. 

Do we have a sense as to how many street children there really 

are, whether or not that number is going up or going down? I noticed that at a recent conference in South Africa at the Institute 

for Security in Johannesburg, it was predicted by the year 2010, 

sub-Saharan Africa would have 20 million more orphans. That 

doesn’t mean, obviously, all of those will be street children by no 

means, but a significant number probably will. 

I just would point out, parenthetically, I was recently in Ethiopia, and the Order that was founded by Mother Teresa was running a home for abandoned children, some of whom are orphans 

and some abandoned, and they were at capacity, 400 children, ages 

2 through 6, kids who otherwise would be out on the streets. HIV 

positive, each and every one of them, but they are being very well 

cared for. The need so outstrips the ability to provide for them. As 

the nun that runs the home was telling me, they are at capacity. 

They are getting support from USAID, they are getting support 

from a number of donor nations, and especially from us, but they 

still can’t expand because they just don’t have the resources. So 

they are kind of like the lucky ones who have a safe haven to go 

to. But there are many more others. So are we looking at a growing 

problem or a problem that is at ebb? 

The second question would be on the issue of the political will. 

Is the State Department routinely—does the President and the Secretary of State, obviously the Director of the Democracy, Human 

Rights and Labor—regularly engaged in dialogue with countries, 

particularly those countries that have a serious problem with street 

children, like Brazil? We are told by human rights groups that 

extrajudicial killings by police and prison authorities are Brazil’s 

most pressing human rights problem. How pervasive is this with 

the street children? 

55

Then let me also ask you, with regards to the Philippines if I 

could, we have seen estimates, I know we do assist a lot of 

Amerasians in Vietnam in trying to provide a means for them to 

come to the United States. But I have seen estimates that there 

are as many as 50,000 Amerasians in the Philippines. How many 

of these kids are street children and how many other indigenous 

Filipinos are on the streets as well? Is there something we could 

do to help the Government of the Philippines do more with regards 

to their very serious problem? 

Finally, on Africa, are African governments responding to the 

problem of street children with repression or with assistance? Is 

this part of our strategy vis-a-vis the African Continent, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, to try to get each of these governments 

engaged? For example, we know Mugabe is tone deaf to anything 

we might say. But his mistreatment—and there are reports that he 

utilized street children as thugs in the most recent election in 2002 

as well—what is the status of trying to get that government engaged to be on the side of protection rather than exploitation and 

abuse? 

Mr. DENEHY. I will address a few of the questions. Some of them 

are probably better for USAID to address directly. 

First with regard to numbers of street children, we find it difficult to collect data, because it is also a definitional problem of 

what constitutes a street person, or street children, rather, so we 

have very little hard data, other than NGO reports. 

Again, I would encourage the NGOs here today and others involved in this issue to communicate with the Department and to 

communicate directly with the human rights, democracy and 

human rights officers in each Embassy or posts about the problems 

that they see. 

The basic bottom line though, Mr. Chairman, is that we believe 

that one vulnerable child, one street child, is one too many. So 

therefore, whether the problem is one or 100,000, we can assure 

you that the Department takes this issue seriously and will report 

this issue. 

I would like to use that to segue into the political will of the Department, if I might. Before coming to this hearing, I had asked 

our folks in DRL to do a search, to look at when there were cables 

issued on when this was raised in bilateral relationships. I was encouraged to see that, even in the past few months, there are a good 

number of indications via cables and other correspondence that indicates this was an issue raised in our bilateral relations, particularly in countries such as the Philippines and Brazil and those 

types of places. 

Coming from the Bureau of Democracy and Human Rights and 

Labor, I can tell you there is commitment and there is will. It is 

raised at the highest levels by our Ambassadors and senior levels 

of the Department and the Administration and their relations with 

foreign leaders. I would just like to reassure you that that does 

take place. 

As for your two questions with regard to the Philippines, I would 

like to ask Lloyd to perhaps comment on USAID’s programs in the 

Philippines to help street children or children who are vulnerable. 

I would be happy to respond to you after this hearing with direct 

56

actions that the Department is taking with regard to those vulnerable populations. I am not prepared now to discuss the full range 

of activities that we have. 

With regard to Africa, this is a very serious problem. It is definitely on the radar screen of the Department. We have raised it 

with African leaders in our bilateral relations. Again, I would leave 

it to Lloyd, the description of USAID’s programming to deal with 

this. 

As you rightfully indicate with regard to Zimbabwe and President Mugabe, we have difficulty in communicating concerns to him 

or at least getting a response to those concerns, although I can tell 

you that I was at a conference last week on a different issue in 

which Mugabe’s use of street children in the elections was discussed with pro-reform forces from Zimbabwe. They are aware of 

it and they made sure it was raised on the State Department’s 

agenda as well. 

Mr. SMITH. Lloyd? 

Mr. FEINBERG. Mr. Chairman, let me comment very briefly on a 

couple of the questions to the best of my ability here. 

With regard to the number of street children and the number of 

orphans, I don’t know what the latest estimates are, but certainly 

work that we had done in the mid-1990s to late-1990s in preparation of a book that has been updated, I believe four times, called 

Children on the Brink, produced the projections of the number of 

children who would be orphaned by HIV/AIDS, and certainly the 

numbers are in excess of 20 million that are anticipated. 

With respect to your observations about the orphanage in Ethiopia, that was reaching maximum capacity. I would like to just 

state our perspective on the issue of how we deal with the millions 

of children who are losing parents, the grandmother, the grandparent phenomenon, where you have, especially in Africa, grandparents taking care of 50, 60 grandchildren, where the whole middle generation is dying because of HIV/AIDS. We have actually documented a terrible phenomenon in Malawi where you have that 

situation. 

The idea of having orphanages as a response to this phenomena 

is, unfortunately, too expensive and it is inadequate. It would just 

be too expensive, we feel, to use that as a strategic option, a strategic solution. That is why we and other donors, other organizations, are trying to promote approaches that use community-based 

approaches to caring for and protecting orphans and other vulnerable children in their communities. 

We feel there are opportunities to have extended family or foster 

families or child protection networks in countries that can provide 

the care and protection. Orphanages and adoptions certainly are 

appropriate for those children who cannot be taken care of, but it 

is a very, very difficult and frightening phenomenon. I do appreciate your sharing with us your views and certainly the orphanages 

such as the one that Mother Teresa’s Order is doing is exceptional. 

With regard to the Philippines, I am sure I will have to get back. 

I know our USAID strategy in that country does not promote the 

issue of vulnerable children. Most of our strategy, I believe, is directed toward the conflict areas in the south. But we, as I mentioned before, we have supported programs dealing with street chilVerDate Mar 21 2002 12:53 Jan 18, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00060 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\AGI\091305\23435.000 HINTREL1 PsN: SHIRL
57

dren in the Philippines in the mid- to late-1990s, and certainly we 

would be happy to engage in providing technical support where it 

might be appropriate. But that is an issue that would have to be 

addressed by our USAID mission director in Manila. 

I say that with a very sincere personal preference to work in the 

Philippines, because I was a volunteer there, and I do have a special relationship and feeling for the country. 

With respect to Africa and the responses of governments, I do believe that it is a mixed bag. The issue of children and other social 

services in countries, in fragile states and transitional states where 

resources are scarce, other pressing challenges confront them, everything from education and basic health, infrastructure, jobs, et 

cetera. I am afraid the children often get the short shrift, and that 

is why we are trying to mainstream the issue of vulnerable children into our development activities and to highlight the issue of—

in all of our health programs and education programs, to try to ensure accessibility for all children to schools and to look at non-formal, informal, appropriate vocational approaches to education and 

training. 

Some countries where we are working, the governments are not 

responsive. In others, they are doing the best that they can. After 

the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, for example, we felt there was a 

very, very strong engagement on the part of the government both 

to ensure education as well as to deinstitutionalize many children 

put into orphanages and reunify those children with existing families. I think we have come quite a ways in terms of reducing to the 

bare minimum the number of orphanages which are in place and 

maximizing the number of children living with their families. 

Mr. SMITH. Let me just ask a couple of additional questions, and 

then I will yield to my colleagues. First, with regards to Brazil, 

when President Lula was Candidate Lula, he made much of being 

the person for the downtrodden and the poor. Has anything 

changed there since he has gained power? Is Brazil doing anything 

about its impunity, and do we raise that issue with our friends in 

Brasilia? 

Secondly, are we providing enough resources, we being the Congress? Is this a resource issue, is it a political will issue or both? 

Is there more we could be doing? 

Thirdly, tomorrow I will be chairing a hearing on the ongoing 

problem in Romania, where the anti-adoption law that has been 

foisted upon the Romanian Parliament by Emma Nicholson, who is 

the rapporteur who held the issue of adoption over the head of the 

Romanian Government as a Sword of Damocles, has actually gotten them to adopt a law that is anti-adoption for foreigners. 

There are at least 200 Americans who had children in the pipeline whose cases have not been resolved, and there are thousands 

of others. The idea of domestic adoption is great, but when you 

don’t have sufficient adoptive parents, the issue becomes one of, 

where do you put these children? I am one who, throughout the 

1980s, made several trips to Romania under the Ceaucescu regime, 

and saw what that dictatorship did to its people. But as soon as 

he fell, right after the December 1989 revolution, they got into 

many of the places where these children were being warehoused. 

In some cases, there were 50 to 60 children in these orphanages, 

58

and adoption is a way of providing a humane alternative to state 

housing, or in this case, a state orphanage. 

Just recently, I have been in one of those homes that is designed 

to help street children. I am very, very concerned that in Romania 

itself, where there is a significant problem of street children, the 

adoption option has now been foreclosed and we will see a spike, 

I would predict, in more street children in Romania as a direct result of the European Union’s interference, and again, undue pressure by this member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur 

Nicholson. 

You mentioned adoption, which is why I brought this up. It does 

provide a durable solution, it seems to me, of a Hague Conventiontype of adoption, where the home study is properly carried out and 

there is no buying or selling of any child. So I would appreciate 

your view on that. I think Romania, Emma Nicholson again, has 

said publicly in a number of news articles that this could become 

a wave of the future, where intercountry adoptions are shut down. 

I think that is an ominous and very, very dangerous step for the 

world community to take, that adoption becomes a non-option. 

Mr. FEINBERG. I can’t speak knowledgeably about the specific situation in Romania, except the fact that ever since the opening of 

Romania and the realization of all the children who had been institutionalized, USAID made that a top strategic priority and had invested quite a bit in terms of both improving and developing of rationale the deinstitutional process and to support and strengthen 

the social service systems to allow for appropriate permanency 

planning, including domestic as well as international adoption. I do 

know that the cessation of the option of international adoption has 

created a serious humanitarian issue for children as well as political problem for bilateral relations. 

I am not sure—I can’t really comment on the status of that situation, except just to say that from the USAID perspective, that mission is still investing in strengthening the social service system on 

the ground to the extent possible. 

Mr. DENEHY. With regard to Romania, it is obviously an issue 

that we have raised bilaterally and also raised multilaterally. I 

would say that we have, within our consular affairs section at the 

Department, an office of children’s affairs which covers these 

issues. I would be happy to coordinate communication between you 

and that office so they might more fully answer any questions that 

you might have with regard to that. 

With regard to the question of a resource issue, what more can 

we do? I think, first, again, I would like to commend you for shining the spotlight onto this issue due to this hearing. As you know, 

street children, vulnerable children, was an issue very much in the 

forefront several years ago. It has somewhat been consumed by 

trafficking and other types of issues. So holding these hearings and 

bringing it back to the fore increases our attention to it. I want to 

assure you that after this hearing, we intend to communicate to 

our posts overseas the outcome of this hearing and to sensitize 

them to the issue as well as bolster chapter 5, our section on children, in the Country Reports itself. 

At this point, from our perspective, we feel we have the resources 

that are necessary. We don’t necessarily need any other legislative 

59

or statutory authority to work this issue. But we would also encourage you to have NGOs both be in contact with the Department 

directly, whether it be consular affairs on children’s affairs issues 

or DRL, or Country Reports Office, to ensure that we get the 

widest breadth of reports reflected in the Country Reports that we 

will submit to you in the coming year. 

With regard to Brazil, while this was an issue that was raised 

and we have seen some minimal progress as indicated by our 

Country Reports, we still remain concerned. There are still a lot of 

reports from NGOs that there are organized police roundups of 

children, although I am told that this is in contradiction to the law, 

which says they can only be arrested if there is a legitimate infraction of the law. But, for instance, in our country report, we cite 

three instances of known police harassment and/or mass arrests of 

children. One, for instance, in San Paulo, in a ‘‘crackland,’’ an area 

which street children inhabited, was basically cleansed of them, the 

streets were cleared. It is not clear to us whether this justice 

placed the children into other areas or if they were found homes 

or got into programs. All we know is that harassment continues 

and it is an issue we are following closely. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Ms. McCollum. 

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the discussion we had on orphanages. I was very pleased to work with Chairman Hyde and Ranking Member Lantos and the White House in 

getting the language included in the bill, which included funding 

for vulnerable children and orphans and having an opportunity to 

meet with many of the African Ambassadors in my office, as well 

as speaking with families in Tanzania, Ethiopia and South Africa, 

and finding out that they really want to see other solutions and big 

institutions built for orphans, than the faith-based organizations I 

have also spoken with, says that needs to be absolutely an option, 

that is, after every single other option has been explored. 

So, Mr. Chair, I think as we move forward toward that portion 

of the funding becoming available for use for vulnerable children 

and orphans, it would probably be good just to have a hearing on 

some of the creative and innovative ways USAID and some of our 

NGOs are working with communities to come up with communitybased solutions. I visited one area in which they are training young 

adults for the opportunity to become tailors, carpenters, and they 

integrated in their community while they are doing that. Some of 

these are head-of-household children going back and helping as 

head of household as well. Other families are pooling together with 

resources, sharing responsibilities, helping an elder grandmother, 

who maybe watches them during the day, not feel solely responsible for providing food. But there is much work to be done and 

there are many who still are not accounted for that are slipping 

through the cracks as these countries find themselves so stressed. 

There are a lot of good things going on out there, but we need 

so much more happening in this situation. So I look forward to 

working with you on it. 

One of the testifiers mentioned there is a challenge between the 

definition of vulnerable child on the street or of the street. ‘‘On the 

street’’ means there might be some kind of loose family support. 

‘‘Of the street’’ means that family support is probably not there at 

60

all, there is not a significant elder even loosely connected with the 

child maybe to help that child, to give them any support. 

But I would think, Mr. Chair, for the purposes of what we want 

to focus on, just the aggregate, and not worrying about breaking 

them out for this Committee, is something that would be helpful. 

Those where they have the different aggregates broken out ‘‘of ’’ 

and ‘‘on’’ the street, I think our Committee staff could take those 

numbers and use them in a way that would help us be more directive in what we need to do in-country. 

I recently have been approached by some people with conversations that I have had dealing with mothers who have found themselves forced going to the street for prostitution to feed their children. It is wrong, it shouldn’t happen. I don’t stand in judgment 

of these women that I have met or the churches that are working 

with these women to get them off the street. Organizations, including some of the governments I have spoken to, are confused about 

the interpretation of how the pledge that we have, the anti-prostitution pledge, is being used. 

There are rumors out there, and I am sure they are not true, of 

repercussions: If you sign the pledge and you are working or you 

come in contact with a prostitute, including religious leaders that 

I spoke with, both Catholic, Protestant and Muslim, that in approaching these women and trying to gain their trust, to get them 

into different occupations, or finding these young girls that either 

have been sold off by their families into prostitution, ran away and 

continue to do prostitution, to put food on the table for themselves, 

that there is attention that if they encounter a prostitute and they 

are working with a prostitute, that somehow it will be seen as a 

breaking of the pledge. So I am hearing a lot of confusion out there 

as to what the pledge means. 

I said I thought it was pretty clear, when I read it, that it doesn’t 

prohibit our NGOs from first encouraging people to end this lifestyle, which is not a healthy one, emotionally or physically or spiritually, but if they are not going to do that, to provide them with 

the tools necessary and the information necessary to try to keep 

them alive and HIV-free to the best of their ability while they still 

continue to reach out and have those children or those children’s 

mothers who are on the street. 

Can you comment? I have heard this from, as I said, Lutheran 

bishops, people who are very active in the mosques in Africa, as 

well as many other NGOs, as well as faith-based NGOs. Why is everybody so nervous about this pledge and how it is going to be interpreted? 

Mr. FEINBERG. I am afraid that I am going to have to beg off responding to that. I am aware of the pledge. I don’t know the details. We don’t come in direct conflict or contact with the implications. However, I would say that certainly in all of our programs, 

the issue of survival sex, prostitution is certainly a major issue for 

all, for very vulnerable populations. 

Where the pressure is, the political pressure in terms of the 

pledge, how that plays out, I would have to ask that we could come 

back to you with a response later. 

[The information referred to follows:]

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Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we need to 

clear this up, because in Committee, I felt we were pretty clear 

that we don’t support prostitution. I certainly don’t. We don’t want 

to be funding people who support prostitution. But there is a difference between supporting prostitution and trying to reach out in 

support of prostitutes changing their lifestyle and providing them 

life skills to help them do that. Mr. Chair, there is a lot of confusion out there, and I would like to look to your leadership in clarifying this confusion. 

Mr. SMITH. If the gentlewoman will yield, as the sponsor of that 

amendment when we were marking up Henry Hyde’s AIDS bill, we 

made it very clear, in the guidance that has come out of the Department at USAID, and obviously as you pointed out, if you read 

the statement that needs to be signed prior to receiving funding, 

it couldn’t be more clear. We want to assist the prostitute. We don’t 

want to enable the brothel owner in any way, shape or form, or to 

convey that somehow we are working in tandem with him or her 

in this continued subjugation of these women. 

Moreover, the thrust of what we hope will happen, and this goes 

for trafficking as well, is there will be a rescue—that the woman 

will find a way. In Ethiopia again, a few weeks ago I went to a 

USAID-funded program about women who had been trafficked into 

the Middle East, out of Ethiopia; they are the lucky ones who have 

been reclaimed and repatriated, are learning a number of skills, including the making of shoes, sandals and other leather goods, some 

of which I bought and have upstairs. They are very well made. 

So they are learning a very marketable skill which will keep 

them, hopefully, from being trapped into that kind of thing again. 

But clarification is always good. I think the intent of the language, 

the clear language that we offered, was approved by the House and 

the Senate and signed by the President, and the implementing 

guidance has been very clear. But where someone has confusion, 

we need to make sure that they understand. 

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Mr. Chair, if there is implementing guidance 

available, I would love to see it so that I can reinforce what the 


23435q.eps
63

intention of the language was, and that was groups working with 

prostitutes, do exactly that, work to change their lifestyle. But in 

the meantime they weren’t prohibited from providing any, at all, 

resource in order to reduce their risk to the transmission of AIDS. 

So I look forward to working with you on that. Thank you, Mr. 

Chair. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Pitts. 

Mr. PITTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

First of all, the governments that have been mentioned by the 

Chairman, how aware are they of this problem? What are the governments, the countries doing, and which ones are dealing well 

with the problem? What kinds of shelter, education, health programs have been most successful in helping street children over 

the long term? And what resources would local governments need 

to duplicate these successful programs? What is the UN doing and, 

what are international organizations doing to address the problem 

of street children? 

Also, to look back at what Congress might need to do to respond, 

what would you think of the treatment of street children being a 

separate performance indicator for, for instance, the Millennium 

Challenge Corporation’s eligibility determinations? Should we 

adopt something similar to our report and tier system for trafficking to deal with the problem of violence against street children? 

Mr. DENEHY. I will punt the programmatic questions over to my 

colleague Mr. Feinberg, but I would address a couple of issues. 

You asked a question, Mr. Pitts, of are these countries aware of 

this problem, and the regard that the Department and the U.S. 

Government takes in our bilateral relations. And I would say resoundingly, yes, we make them aware. They are certainly fully 

aware that it is reported to Congress in the Country Reports. It has 

been and will continue to be raised in our dialogue at all levels 

with officials in bilateral and in multilateral fora. 

With regard to programmatic resources and those types of questions, I think I would leave that to Lloyd. He has a much better 

handle on that than I do. 

I would like to address the question of a tier ranking system, or 

specific—perhaps a separate section of the Country Reports with regard to vulnerable children or street children. With regard to having it as a separate section of our Country Reports, we feel as it 

is handled now is appropriate. 

We have instructed our posts and will again instruct them this 

year to focus on this issue so that we can expand chapter 5 on children, and again would encourage NGOs to establish relations with 

the human rights officers at posts as well as the Department so we 

can do that. 

We believe children are the most vulnerable. We applaud all the 

work that is done by the groups here today to include Congress and 

the NGOs. 

We have been reporting on children in the Country Reports for 

years. This is not a new phenomenon for us. We acknowledge there 

is always room for improvement and look forward to doing that in 

the coming year, but we feel right now it is appropriately handled 

in the Report. 

64

With regard to tier ranking, we feel that the Country Reports

and the supporting human rights and democracy report adequately 

cover that, the vulnerable children and street children issue. It is 

used in a calculation of our holding sentence in the Country Reports about whether we feel the human rights situation in a country has improved or degraded. 

We are concerned that, by a problem that lacks precise definition 

as we have outlined here today, that it is a subjective measure as 

opposed to an objective measure such as trafficking, and would 

therefore urge that we continue along this process of using it in the 

formulation of our holding sentence in the Country Reports. Mr. FEINBERG. Thank you for the questions, Mr. Pitts. I think 

they are quite important to address. 

In terms of records of successful government actions, I think it 

is a hard—it would be a hard statement to make, because a lot of 

times governments may have nice policies, but zero implementation. And other times it is really a matter of who is at the head 

of the responsible agencies. 

I think in our experience, for example, recently we have been 

working in Indonesia where there has been a major push to provide 

for identification documentation for children, which, without documentation, children are—you know, start off way behind their own 

goal line. 

And in Ethiopia there has been a very strong government support for strengthening networks. I think there has been some very 

significant work that is being done by the Street Children’s Forum 

in Ethiopia in the past decade that does receive good government 

support and a strong history of their social welfare ministry supporting activities such as this. 

In Georgia, where we have a new program starting up, there is 

a very strong government push for the deinstitutionalization of 

children, and certainly in Zambia, where they have a terrible problem of children orphaned and affected by HIV/AIDS, there is a 

strong commitment by the government to build safety nets. 

Those are different examples. I think there are a lot many more 

that you could mention, and I think, as I said before, in Rwanda 

they had demonstrated real commitment to the closing down of unnecessary orphanages. So I think that one of our objectives of this 

year within our fund is to try to identify successful and replicable 

models and experiences which do work in this, as well as those 

that don’t. 

With respect to indicators, I would just urge caution. Indicators 

are very dangerous things. To use quantitative indicators as measures of progress sometimes can really misguide programs. Programs that become focused on meeting their targets, their quantitative targets, sometimes can just miss the qualitative need of the 

program. 

And certainly at the project level, you have to look at how many 

children might be affected, might be included, as well as trying to 

determine how you are trying to improve the well-being of children. 

But in terms of using program-level or global indicators, there really is a danger that in order to meet targets, agencies such as our 

own and our collaborating NGOs sometimes can really be under an 

unnecessary burden to meet targets and miss the real boat. 

65

Mr. PITTS. What about the UN or international organizations? 

Are they doing enough; what are they doing? 

Mr. DENEHY. I would say that our experience, as I am sure you 

are aware, is slightly schizophrenic there in the sense that we have 

seen conventions such as Convention on the Rights of the Child 

and other multilateral efforts to attempt to protect vulnerable 

members of society, which we feel are inappropriate. However, 

there are two optional protocols of that convention which we have 

ratified and signed on, pornography and abuse and sale of children 

and on child soldiers. 

We have seen the UN and some of its affiliated organizations 

such as ILO and others do valuable work with regard to child labor 

and identify this issue. But, again, it is a mixed bag. What we see 

in the international conventions and agreements, we have some 

concerns, but we have also seen on the programmatic side some 

good work. And perhaps—I don’t know if you want to talk 

about——

Mr. FEINBERG. It is a broad range. Certainly we have worked 

closely with UNICEF, which is the main UN agency responsible for 

the care and protection of children. Generally they work primarily 

with host governments in terms of establishing policies and 

strengthening their systems. 

But with any program, there is certainly the wide range of quality and commitment. 

Mr. PITTS. That you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Dr. Boozman. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. In listening to the testimony and listening to the 

previous testimony over the past several months, it is easy to get 

discouraged. As you know, we have discussed a number of different 

countries. We talked about Darfur, the Philippines, Peru, Brazil, 

Uganda. The list goes on and on, crossing different continents, different religions, and different reasons; child soldiers, child sex, children enslaved for work purposes, and children that are left to fend 

for themselves. And on top of that, we have UN peacekeepers that 

abuse children. There really doesn’t seem to be a common denominator. If there is, you can tell me about it. The only common denominator that I see is that people really don’t care. 

We saw pictures on television, you know, for the last couple of 

weeks, last week or so, we had situations in New Orleans where 

you literally had the news commentators in tears. The Nation was 

in tears watching this stuff. You can show pictures like that day 

in and day out that are going on right now except in most worst 

extremes. Okay, but again the difficulty is—it is really getting people to care at all. 

After visiting several of these countries, visiting the African 

Union, visiting the UN, I’ve noticed a lot of lip service, but like I 

said, there really isn’t a lot of caring going on. Certainly nothing 

like was done in New Orleans, where the Nation has opened their 

homes to these folks and we’ve had this tremendous reaction. 

This is not the most glamorous Committee in the world, but we 

are here because we really do want to help. I think we have made 

a difference under the leadership of our Chairman and Ranking 

Member, but again, we really need some direction as to how to 

66

push this thing forward. And, like I say, my frustration is that it 

doesn’t seem a whole lot is changing. 

Mr. DENEHY. If I could just respond very quickly by saying, one, 

is I am here in part to dissolve any belief that the State Department does not care about vulnerable children, because we do, particularly the bureau that I work in, but the Department at large. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Don’t misunderstand. I believe that is the case, 

okay. But you do understand what I am saying? 

Mr. DENEHY. I do. I understand your point. I would just like to 

respond to one thing, the common denominator question, if I might. 

It seems to me what I attempted to address in my remarks, and 

I think Lloyd addressed in his maybe more articulately, is the one 

common denominator is the lack of familial unit or caring adult 

who watches over these children and this systematic or individual 

abuse by adults or older children of these most vulnerable people. 

And I think that is, as Lloyd points out in his testimony, what his 

programming is trying to address. 

Mr. FEINBERG. It is easy to be cynical and discouraged. All I can 

say is, I started working on this as a side issue as part of my regular job over 15 years ago, and I am still doing it, maybe because 

I can’t get another job. But frankly, I like coming to work every 

day, and I don’t plan on changing it because I am encouraged. And 

I am mostly encouraged by the people who are committed, the people who do care, and the progress that has been made, and, most 

importantly, when you see how many children, given the opportunity to take advantage of their own natural resilience, that are 

able to make it. Sure, it is a very discouraging picture, but I think 

there is an awful lot that has been done and can be done, and so 

I am quite optimistic. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. And like I say, don’t misunderstand, I understand 

that you are doing this, too, for the same reasons that the Committee is here, and we are interested in the same issues. You know, 

we are pretty tough on countries like Cuba for various reasons. Are 

there countries that we need to pick out as the worst offenders and 

just say we are going to get really tough in the same manner as 

we are with Cuba? What I am looking for are specific things to do 

versus what we are doing. 

Mr. FEINBERG. It is tough to politicize the issue, and I leave that 

up to David to respond to. 

I feel that in terms of our investments at the program level of 

looking at ways of addressing issues of the most vulnerable children, working to get them—provide access to school, to mitigate the 

impact of severe tragedies, conflict, impact of HIV/AIDS, to look at 

ways to increase the ability of children and their parents to generate income, get children out of institutions, it is a slow process. 

There are no quick fixes. But there is a—it is very much of a multifaceted strategy that unfortunately is not discernible unless a government happens to come in not because of foreign pressure, but 

because of national pressure and says, we are going to do something. 

A lot of the political issues cannot be imposed from the outside 

even with economic sanctions or—but certainly the issue of participating at the political level, at the multilateral and bilateral level 

has to be maintained. 

67

But I would just say I don’t think there are any silver bullets, 

no quick fixes, but certainly there is a lot of need to continue, I believe, what we are doing. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. I just have a quick question. 

I didn’t hear your testimony, so I won’t ask any questions except 

a quick question and a quick statement. 

Did someone mention that we have ratified the Convention on 

Children Soldiers? Has the U.S. ratified that? 

Mr. DENEHY. My information is that the two optional protocols 

on the convention, one on the sale and pornography and sex abuse 

of children and on child soldiers, we have approved, yes. 

Mr. PAYNE. That is good to know. That is news, and that is very 

positive. 

Let me just say that I agree that there are a lot of people who 

are trying and who really want to see things happen. I happen to 

have been, last evening, with a group that really was very supportive of the Millennium Challenge, the millennium goals that our 

Administration decided early on, several weeks ago, that 5 years 

ago when the goals were made, that there was an attempt to reexamine, and in the goals it said after 5 years we would have a review of the goals. And our Administration wanted to eliminate the 

goals totally after several weeks of debate, and sort of outrage by 

some of the—most all of the other countries, we have somehow reestablished some support of the millennium development goals. 

I say that there are people, though, who are very, very interested. I was with—Jeffrey Sachs, I guess you know, wrote the book 

on the end of poverty and how we can make it happen in our lifetime, and Jeffrey Sachs has done an outstanding job, and I was 

with him last night and had dinner with him and Angelina Jolie, 

who is the UN Goodwill Ambassador for refugees. I mention that 

because Ray Chambers, who was just an individual, a very wealthy 

person actually, from Newark, New Jersey, decided that if governments are going to fail, that he has brought together about 75 of 

the wealthiest Americans and organizations last night to say that 

they will do it. 

They are going to take 100 villages, Ray Chambers group—grew 

up in my town, went to one of the public high schools up the street 

from where I went to. Schools are very, very strong supporters of 

this Administration as a matter of fact. 

However, you know, people at that dinner were disappointed, but 

they are going to take private dollars. He is going to give millions 

just to say, ‘‘If the government is not going to do it, then we who 

have been blessed, we who have been privileged, we who have the 

wherewithal, and we will have to do it,’’ and they have a goal of 

100 villages before the end of the year. And they showed a film 

which is going to be on MTV tonight of a village in Kenya where 

they simply brought fertilizer in this project of Jeffrey Sachs, and 

the average yield was about 6, 7, or 8 inches high of maize. Just 

bringing in simple fertilizer, having an expert in farming bring in 

some new seeds, the yield was fourfold, just with a basic cost of 

probably $75,000, $100,000, which will transform that entire village. 

68

And so in a sense it can be done so quick, economically right at 

the grassroots. They are going to do it. So I was very elated; called 

it Millennium Development Goals of the Millennium Development 

Challenge, Village Challenge—some name—and they intend to 

have thousands done in the next few years. So there are people 

that are really very interested and are really putting their dollars 

where their mouths are. And I really commend Ray Chambers and 

that whole group that was over in New York last night and had 

a late dinner after the presentation. And that really has been a tremendous lift and a boost to me to see how the private sector has 

decided that maybe they need to do it. 

So there is hope. Mr. Feinberg said he enjoys going to work every 

day, and I don’t blame you because there is a lot of great things 

that are done and that we need to continue to do. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

I want to thank our very distinguished witnesses for your testimony, for your leadership, for your courage, and for making a difference in the lives of so many children. And we want to work as 

partners with you, and we look forward to continuing that dialogue 

and seeing what we can do to enhance congressional actions and 

roles going forth. So I want to thank you again. I appreciate it. 

I would like to now welcome the second panel to the witness 

stand beginning with Lord David Alton, who is another famous 

resident of Liverpool, currently a Professor of Citizenship at Liverpool John Moores University. He is a Co-Founder of the Jubilee 

Campaign in the British Parliament and was the Founding Chairman of the all-party Parliamentary Group on Street Children. Lord 

Alton has traveled to areas of the world with significant street children populations and sought to work through governmental and 

through compassionate NGO channels to bring about effective 

change to stop the killing and improve the overall conditions for 

children at risk. 

For 18 years, Lord Alton was a member of the House of Commons and today is Independent Crossbench Life Peer. In 1972, he 

was elected to the Liverpool City Council as Britain’s youngest city 

councilor. Twenty-five year later, in 1997, David was made a Life 

Peer of the House of Lords. 

Lord Alton, again, welcome, and please proceed as you wish. 

STATEMENT OF LORD DAVID ALTON, HOUSE OF LORDS, 

UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND 

Lord ALTON. I thank you very much, Mr. Chairperson. First of 

all, can I thank you very much and Members of your Subcommittee 

for the gracious way in which you welcomed us earlier today. And 

may I also say that it gives me particular pleasure to see you in 

the chair. I have been a longstanding admirer of all the work that 

you have done, particularly on human rights issues, but it has also 

been a privilege to collaborate with you in the past on issues such 

as human trafficking. 

And, of course, also I was very struck by the welcome of Congressman Pitts. It has been a pleasure for me to cooperate with 

Congressman Pitts on earlier occasions. We have traveled together 

69

the Burma-Thai border to see refugee situations there and to take 

up religious liberties issues in countries such as Laos and Vietnam. 

But it has also been a pleasure for me to meet other Members 

of your Subcommittee, to hear from them this afternoon, and also 

to hear from your expert witnesses who set the scenes so admirably 

for us today. 

I think it is not unreasonable to link this issue with the issue 

of trafficking, which has been referred to earlier on, because it 

seems to me that this is very much like an iceberg, and that if you 

look below the water levels, you can see that what is producing the 

problems of trafficking, sexual exploitation of children, children in 

prisons, children on the streets, children who are carrying arms—

the sort of points that Congressman Boozman was making earlier 

on—the reason for that is that there is this army of street children 

in so many countries and continents all over the world. The scale 

is, I think, quite breathtaking. 

I submitted to you the full statement, but I will, if I may, just 

give a precis of that this afternoon. I would like to link with it, and 

make a further submission to you, of a report that the Jubilee 

Campaign has just published called Kids Behind Bars: Why We 

Must Act. 

Jubilee Campaign has been lobbying to protect children’s rights 

for over 10 years, and as you have said, I helped found Jubilee 

Campaign in the British Parliament 20 years ago. But, of course, 

it not only operates in Westminster, it has a sister organization 

here in DC. Members of your Subcommittee have cooperated with 

its work in the past, and we are grateful to you for that. Jubilee 

Campaign’s advocacy has stood alongside the direct and practical 

support provided by the campaign’s other organization, Jubilee Action. 

Street children have been the focus of Jubilee Action’s work, and 

in the British Parliament, it is the Secretariat to the Parliamentary Street Children Committee. Jubilee Action also provides or 

funds accommodation and shelter in many parts of the world. And 

picking up a point I thought was well made by Congresswoman 

McCollum earlier on today about the link with prostitution, Jubilee 

has a number of hostels which it has opened in Mumbai for children whose mothers have been working in the sex tourism industry. And one very practical way of ending the vicious circle of children going into sex tourism is to make this sort of provision. 

But I was also struck, Mr. Chairman, by the link that you made 

with the issue of conflict, and I think that that is perhaps the biggest link of all. From your own recent visit to Sudan and Darfur, 

you will see that in that country where 2 million people were killed 

over 19 years, in Darfur where maybe up to 400,000 people have 

died, but the situation is appalling. I was in Darfur myself a few 

months ago and traveled 2 years ago into the war-torn areas of 

southern Sudan, and there is no doubt that conflict has played its 

part. 

I also traveled recently to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 

where 3.7 million people have died over the last 15 years. And in 

a meeting yesterday with Senator Brownback, we agreed that this 

has been one of the great untold stories of our time and how conflict has generated many of the problems on the streets. In 

70

Kinshasa, for instance, the capital of Congo, there are more than 

30,000 street children estimated to be there today, between 20,000 

and 30,000 street children. 

Now, in the early 1990s, Jubilee Campaign was one of the first 

United Kingdom groups to highlight the killing of street children 

on the streets of Brazil, and we shined a torch on that subject. We 

were able to see some action; working with journalists John Downing and Danny McGrory, we exposed the reality of police death 

squads, a point that was alluded to during questioning earlier on. 

This made front page headlines in some of our national newspapers, and we were pleased that when we launched this report 

about children behind bars just a couple weeks ago, that CNN and 

ITN gave it worldwide coverage. So in other words, the situation 

continues today, but maybe in different manifestations. 

I want now to illustrate my remarks with some visual slides. The 

slide that is being shown at the moment of Copacabana in Brazil. 

[The slide referred to follows:]

In the forefront is a cardboard box, and if you look very carefully, 

you will see the two tiny feet of a child who has been killed and 

literally dumped like so much detritus, so much rubbish on the 

beach there. 

An expert from Brazil’s National Movement of Street Children 

said that between four and five adolescents are murdered daily. I 

repeat, every single day in Brazil, between four and five children 

and adolescents are killed, and you will hear more from one of our 

other witnesses in a few moments about the situation firsthand. 

Every 12 minutes a children is beaten; 41⁄2 million children 

under the age of 12 are working; 500,000 children are engaged in 

domestic labor. In 40 percent of crimes, children are the victims. 


23435k.eps
71

In a visit to Brazil last year, in the report that I wrote—I will 

also submit to you the report arising out of that visit, it also appears on the Jubilee Campaign Web site—I saw a small cross outside the church in this slide—the Church of our Lady of Candelaria 

in Rio. 

[The slide referred to follows:]

On the cross are the names of eight boys who were shot dead by 

police as they slept. And on the pavement is a picture I took of the 

sidewalk there in front of that church. There were eight children 

asleep on that pavement who were shot dead by the Rio police. The 

silhouettes of the dead children are etched red on the footpath to 

this day. 

The massive proliferation of small arms, something that is 

graphically described in the movie, City of God—for those of you 

who haven’t seen it, it shows a great deal of violence, but it is a 

truthful depiction of what is taking place in the favelas. Those 

small arms are a major cause of these statistics. One of the activists from the National Movement of Street Children in Rio told me 

it is easier for a child to get a gun—you can see a picture here of 

not actors, of real children brandishing guns—it is easier for a 

child to get a gun than to get a bus pass. 

[The slide referred to follows:]


23435l.eps
72

But this situation is not restricted to Brazil, as we have been 

hearing earlier on. Street children across the world may be homeless, work on the streets, have no contact with their families, live 

on the streets with their families, live in day or night shelters, or 

spend time in institutions; for example, the prisons I have referred 

to. 

There are no confirmed figures, as we have heard, on the total 

numbers of street children. They are not easy to count due to migration, exclusion from infrastructures such as schools and colleges, 

and due to differing definitions, a point that Congresswoman 

McCollum made earlier on, due to the differing definitions of what 

constitutes street children. But I think she was right to say we 

shouldn’t get into a theological argument about that. We should 

understand that this is a grave problem, and an increasing one. 

But some statistics we have produced for you, which have been 

provided by NGOs working in these countries, in Kenya it is estimated a quarter of a million children are on the streets there; in 

Ethiopia, 150,000; in Zimbabwe, where the number has most certainly risen, as your expert witnesses referred to earlier on, because of the deprivations of Robert Mugabe. This is something you, 

Mr. Chairman, referred to in your questioning, that number has 

undoubtedly increased as a result of the bulldozing of the homes 

of some of the poorest people in Harare; in Bangladesh, an estimated 445,000; in Nepal, 30,000; and in India, maybe as many as 

11 million. 

There are many other countries though. And I am Chairman of 

the British Parliamentary Committee on North Korea, and I visited 

that country 18 months ago, and, of course, 2 million people died 

in North Korea during the terrible famine there. We heard even 


23435m.eps
73

from North Korean officials, who were quite candid about this aspect of life in their country, that there are many of what they call 

‘‘street swallows,’’ abandoned children, living on the streets in 

many parts of their country, too. 

Now, while these figures are therefore estimates, and problematic in statistical terms, there is anecdotal evidence that these figures are increasing country by country, and that, in my view, is 

being fueled primarily by conflict. But there are other issues, uncontrolled urbanization, directly linked to poverty; conflict within 

families, conflict with the law, and children, of course, being orphaned due to AIDS and HIV. And in Kenya especially, where I 

visited the biggest shantytown in Africa in Kibera 18 months ago, 

the situation there is appalling with vast numbers of children who 

have been orphaned because of the AIDS pandemic. 

Examples of what I mean, well, street children in conflict with 

the law, the Philippines situation, which we will hear more about 

from Father Shay Cullen in due course, but the Philippines and the 

Congo are two examples I would like to highlight in this slide. 

[The slide referred to follows:]

Vagrancy in some countries is an offense, and the police round 

these children up from the streets and throw them into prison; 

other children accused of petty crimes and imprisoned, often without having a first hearing, in overcrowded adult jails where they 

are at the mercy of prison guards and fellow prisoners. Some will 

even be in prison for pedophile offenders. Imagine putting children, 

like the young girl in the picture on the front of this report, into 

those kinds of prisons. This girl, Rosie, was just age 6, and if it 

hadn’t been for the actions of Father Shay Cullen, whom you will 


23435n.eps
74

hear from, she would have remained in prison. He rescued her 

from there. 

UNICEF estimates that in 2001 there were 1 million children illegally imprisoned in jails across the world. The proportion of juvenile detainees throughout prisons varies from country to country, 

from 0.5 percent up to 30 percent of total prison populations. 

Mr. Chairman, in the Philippines there are an estimated 20,000 

children imprisoned in conditions that amount to torture over the 

course of a year. And yesterday morning we had the opportunity 

to meet with the authorities from the Philippine Government at 

their Embassy here in Washington. They confirmed to us, officially, 

that there are, at least on this day—while their own President is 

meeting with other political leaders in New York, there are over 

3,700 children in their prisons in the Philippines today. Children 

as young as 9 can be tried in courts and sent to jail. Some children 

have been found in jail younger than 9, like Rosie, age 6. 

Children in prison with adults are five times more likely to be 

sexually assaulted. They are twice as likely to be beaten, and 50 

percent more likely to be attacked with a weapon than children 

housed in juvenile detention centers. Many of them are children 

who committed no offenses whatsoever, simply rounded up off the 

streets and placed in prison. 

One example was given recently of a young man—and we were 

given this example yesterday by the officials from the Philippine 

Embassy—the young man who spent, I think, 4 or 5 years in prison 

was ultimately released with no criminal record, no offenses were 

ultimately indicted against him, and during that time he did at 

least have the opportunity of some education. He is now a Fulbright scholar, which only goes to show the opportunities that are 

being denied to the vast numbers of street children and what could 

be done if proper education were provided for them. 

Further original research was undertaken within the other example I want to give of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

UNICEF estimates that between 20,000 and 30,000 children under 

the age of 12 are under arms, and that makes up 10 percent of the 

armed groups in the region; at least 20,000 children are believed 

to live on the streets in the DRC capital, that is Kinshasa; and of 

the children imprisoned in the central prison of Makala, all of them 

were found to be in acutely traumatized states. 

The slide that will follow now follows on the report that we did 

on Brazil, and I will come now to the conclusion in my remarks. 

[The slide referred to follows:]

75

In September 2004, Jubilee Campaign, at my instigation, 

launched a new Web site. It’s called stopkillingchildren.com. We 

thought this would be a way of shining a light on the situation in 

Brazil, because we thought it unacceptable for any country to allow 

the routine killing of children without redress, and for those deaths 

to go on being unrecorded day by day. And I remind you again of 

the statistics I gave earlier: Between four and five children and 

adolescents die every single day in Brazil—not in Iraq or in the 

Middle East, but here in the Americas, and in a country which is 

one of the wealthiest countries in the world. 

When children like Danielle Becham are killed in the United 

Kingdom, that tragedy is rightly front page news. In places in 

Brazil, where violence against children is common, the lives of children who are killed are easily forgotten. 

Our Web site will always in the future report cases in countries 

such as Guatemala, the Philippines and Honduras. However, starting with Brazil, this Web site has two aims; firstly, in the absence 

of a gravestone for many of these children, the site would document 

the deaths of children killed through armed violence. The site will 

be a memorial and a reminder that their lives are not forgotten; 

and secondly, to be a tool in order to provide leverage and political 

pressure on the relevant authorities to take effective action to prevent the killing of children by armed violence. 

The Web site has letters to be downloaded to the Brazilian President, President Lula, who was referred to earlier, and a petition to 

sign because we do believe that the Brazilian Government is a 

democratic government and is properly susceptible to reasonable 

political pressure. And there are many people in Brazil who recognize that this is a stain on the name of their country and want to 


23435o.eps
76

see something happen about it, but many are frightened. A journalist, 2 years ago, who reported on events in Brazil was himself 

assassinated for telling the story of some of the armed gangs and 

drug barons who are involved in using the street children as what 

are called ‘‘little planes’’ to fly their merchandise. 

The number of cases we have documented on this site now exceeds 750 during this year alone. I want to end my speech by giving you just four examples of cases we have already compiled of 

children and young people whose lives have been needlessly cut 

short. These are not history. Their deaths all happened this year. 

On May 9, 2005, a 6-month-old girl—I repeat, a 6-month-old 

girl—was raped and killed. It was on a Saturday around midday 

at home in the locality of Sitio Extrema in the municipality of Ico, 

Ceara. Reportedly, the crime was committed by the victim’s uncle 

while her parents were out of the home. The alleged killer is now 

in police custody. 

On June 14, 2005, a 2-year-old boy was shot dead by his cousin. 

Reportedly the victim’s 13-year-old cousin showed his father’s gun 

to an 11-year-old cousin, and the child was near them. According 

to the 11-year-old boy, the teenager said that he would shoot him, 

and he decided to take the child back home. As they turned back, 

the 13-year-old boy shot the victim. 

On August 9, an 8-year-old boy was found dead, cut in pieces. 

The 8-year-old boy was found inside a pack cut in pieces. This happened in the district of Vila Bahia, in the municipality of 

Encruzilhada in Bahia. Reportedly the boy was last seen on Sunday afternoon. The confessed killer, Zenilton Barbosa dos Santon, 

28, said he committed the crime because the victim had offended 

him. The crime is under investigation. 

On August 18, three children were found dead on a Tuesday 

afternoon. Reportedly the victims, two aged 8, one of them age 7, 

were last seen on Monday afternoon; were found in different places 

along the Almada River 15 kilometers away from the downtown of 

the municipality. According to the police, the victims, two girls and 

a boy, were strangled. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for listening to these graphic details. 

I know that Members of your Subcommittee are deeply committed 

to doing something about these issues. Thank you for the opportunity of shining a light on these issues. Let’s hope that together 

through our British Parliament and through the American Congress, that we can make this a serious issue that will be taken seriously worldwide. These street children represent the future of their 

countries, and unless this issue is taken seriously, their countries 

will have no future. 

[The prepared statement of Lord Alton follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF LORD DAVID ALTON, HOUSE OF LORDS, UNITED KINGDOM

OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND

INTRODUCTION & PRESENT REALITY: 

Good afternoon. 

Jubilee Campaign has been lobbying to protect children’s rights for over 10 years. 

Jubilee Campaign’s advocacy has stood alongside the direct and practical support 

provided by Campaign’s sister organisation, Jubilee Action. 

77

Street Children are not a recent phenomenon. Whenever there has been a major 

social, political or economic crisis the existence of Street Children has been prevalent. 

Estimates for children living in the streets include:

Brazil—200,000 to 8 million 

India—over 400,000 in the cities alone 

The Philippines—1.5 million

In the early 1990’s Jubilee Campaign was one of the first UK groups to sound 

the killing of street children on the streets of Brazil. 

Working with journalists John Downing and Danny McGrory we exposed the reality of police death squads—making front page news in the Daily Express, a National UK daily paper. 

Many well-known figures including Paul McCartney, George and Olivia Harrison, 

Richard Branson and Imran Khan have supported the campaign. 

A defining moment was when the issue of street children was put on the agenda 

by John Major during his visit to Rio for the 1992 Earth Summit. 

During this period, Jubilee gathered shocking evidence of police death squads routinely shooting children on the streets to clear them off the streets. 

I visited to Brazil, in February 2004, hoping to discover the situation had 

changed. 

We began our mission by making a quiet pilgrimage to the church of Our Lady 

of Candelaria, in Rio. 

It was here, in July 1993 that six police officers opened fire on a group of street 

children who were sleeping in some doorways opposite the church. 

Today, a small cross, with the names of the eight boys who died, has been erected 

in front of Candelaria. Their silhouettes have been etched in red onto the surface 

of the street. 

Our investigation found that the killing of street children in Brazil continues—

at an alarming rate. The only perceivable change since 1990s is a redistribution of 

where the killings are taking place. 

The police no longer shoot children in public—they have learnt that bad publicity 

is not good for tourism. 

Hidden away in the sprawling favelas of Brazil’s major cities, children are on the 

front-line of an urban war between rival drug gangs. 

An expert from Brazil’s National Movement of Street Children says that between 

4 and 5 adolescents are murdered daily; that every 12 minutes a child is beaten; that 

4.5 million children under 12 are working; and that 500,000 children are engaged 

in domestic labour. In 40% of crimes children are the victims. 

The massive proliferation of small arms is a central cause. One of the movement’s 

activists told me, ‘It is easier for a child to get a gun than to get a bus-pass.’

Alongside the greater accessibility to guns, what has changed since the 1990’s and 

deepened the crisis, is the emergence of a ruinous drugs culture. Formerly, Brazil 

was simply a transit country for the notorious producers of Columbia, Bolivia and 

Peru. 

Today, Brazil ranks only after the USA as the second biggest consumer of cocaine. 

In Rio’s 680 favelas—where about 25% of the city’s 12 million people live—this has 

led to the emergence of no-go areas controlled by rival gangs such as Red Command 

and Third Command, who organize and arm the children. 

Children as young as four have guns and are used as ‘little planes’—to use the 

jargon of the street-trafficking drugs and messages between sellers and buyers. 

I was struck by the remark of one youngster in the favela who told me that, ‘‘The 

only way to go up in society is to go through the trafficking of guns or drugs.’’

The role models are young men with designer clothes and brand new motorbikes. 

They earn phenomenally more through the drugs trade than their fathers. But, if 

they come to represent the only ladder on which the young can climb out of destitution, Lula will end up presiding over a dead country. It is impossible to reconcile 

rhetoric about social justice and opportunity with the reality of corpses lying like 

litter in the streets. 

During our visit, we went to Santo Amoro which is situated in North East brazil 

on the edge of one of Recife’s biggest favelas and is the most violent area in the 

city. Last year, sixteen young people were shot, or died, as a result of either nonpayment to pushers or from overdoses. The youngest urchin was ten years old. 

One of the workers at Santo Amoro, has seen his three brothers killed and the 

young woman who trains the dancers recently saw her brother gunned down. 

Tellingly, she demanded to know why firearms should be freely available: ‘‘Children who can’t even get food to eat can get a gun. 74% of the killings are by gun. 

I never saw a gun in my life and now they are everywhere.’’ She described how two 

78

more young people, aged 20 and 21, who passed through their centre, had been 

killed in the previous week. One was another case of mistaken identity: ‘‘They took 

him from his mother’s arms and killed him.’’ The other had been a drug user who 

hadn’t paid his bill. 

She wanted to know where the international pressure to end the bloodbath was. 

Pointedly, she said that, ‘‘While the killers are free, it is society that is in prison. 

Her son died just one year ago and unlike most people, who are cowed into silence 

by a fear of brutal retaliation, the people of Peixinhos rallied to support her as she 

organized a public procession of crosses and candles. In all, there were eighty 

crosses—each bearing the name of men, women and children who had been killed 

over the previous two years. Repeat: eighty people from one small community in just 

two years. 

This situation, however, is not restricted to Brazil. 

STREET CHILDREN—A GLOBAL OVERVIEW: 

Street Children across the world may be homeless, work on the streets, have no 

contact with their families, live on the streets with their families, live in day or 

night shelters or spend time in institutions, for example prison. 

There are no confirmed figures of Street Children, they are not easy to count due 

to migration, exclusion from infrastructures such as schools and colleges and due 

to differing definitions of the term Street Children. Figures for these children are 

estimates and can often be wildly exaggerated. Most statistics are simply estimates 

for example:

Kenya: 250,000

Ethiopia: 150,000

Zimbabwe: 12,000

Bangladesh: 445,226

Nepal: 30,000

India: 11 million

Whilst these figures are estimates, there is anecdotal evidence that these figures 

are increasing country by country due to the following:

• Uncontrollable urbanisation—directly linked to poverty

• Conflict within family

• Conflict with the law

• Children being orphaned due to AIDS/HIV 

STREET CHILDREN IN CONFLICT WITH THE LAW—PHILIPPINES & CONGO: 

Vagrancy is in some countries an offence, and the police round these children up 

from the streets and through them into prison. Other children are accused of petty 

crimes and imprisoned, often without having a first hearing, in overcrowded adult 

jails where they are at the mercy of the prison guards and fellow prisoners. 

UNICEF estimated in 2001 that there were 1 million children illegally imprisoned 

in jails across the world. The proportion of juvenile detainees to adult prisoners varies from country to country from 0.5–30% of the total prison population. 

Jubilee Action, a children’s human rights charity from Guildford, UK has released 

a report detailing this horrendous situation, and took an ITN camera crew to the 

Philippines to document the reality of child prisoners. This report was subsequently 

shown on Broadcast Networks worldwide, including CNN. 

In the Philippines there are estimated to be 20,000 children imprisoned in conditions that amount to torture. Children as young as 9 can be tried in courts and sent 

to jails, some children have been found in jail younger than 9, like Rosie aged 6. 

Children imprisoned with adults are:

• 5 times more likely to be sexually assaulted

• Twice as likely to be beaten

• And 50% more likely to be attacked with a weapon, than children housed in 

juvenile detention centres.

Further original research was undertaken within the Democratic Republic of 

Congo (DRC). 

UNICEF estimates that 30,000 children under the age of 12 are under-arms and 

this makes up 10% of the armed groups in the region. 20,000 children are believed 

to live on the streets in the DRC capital, Kinshasa, and of the children imprisoned 

in the Central Prison of Makala, all them were found to be in an acutely 

traumatised state. 

79

STOP KILLING CHILDREN WEB SITE: 

In September 2004 Jubilee Campaign launched the Stop Killing Children website 

because we believe that it is unacceptable for any country to allow the routine killing of children without redress. 

When children like Danielle Becham in are killed in the UK, this tragedy is rightly front page news. In places like Brazil where violence against children is common 

place, the lives of children who are killed are easily forgotten. 

The website will also report cases from countries such as Guatemala, the Philippines and Honduras. However, starting with Brazil, this web-site has two aims;

1. In the absence of a grave stone for many of these children, this site will document the deaths of children killed through armed violence. This site will 

be a memorial and a reminder that their lives are not forgotten. 

2. To be a tool in order to leverage political pressure on the relevant authorities 

to take effective action to prevent the killing of children through armed violence. The website has letters to be downloaded to the Brazilian President 

and a petition to sign because we believe the Brazilian Government is susceptible to political pressure.

The number of reported cases on this website has now exceeded 750 in a single 

year. 

I want to end my statement by giving some examples of these cases we have already compiled of children and young people whose lives have been needlessly cut 

short. 

May 09, 2005

6 month old girl raped and killed 

A six-month-old girl was raped and killed on Saturday around midday at home 

in the locality of Sı ́tio Extrema, in the municipality of Ico ́ (Ceara ́). Reportedly, the 

crime was committed by the victim’s uncle whilst her parents were out of home. The 

alleged killer is in police custody. 

Jun 14, 2005

2 year old boy shot dead by his cousin. 

Reportedly, the victim’s 13-year-old cousin showed his father’s gun to an 11-yearold cousin and the child was near them. According to the 11-year-old boy, the teenager said that he would shoot him and he decided to take the child back home. As 

they turned back, the 13-year-old boy shot the victim. 

Aug 09, 2005

8 year old boy found dead cut in pieces 

Eight-year-old boy was found dead inside a pack cut in pieces yesterday afternoon 

in the district of Vila Bahia, in the municipality of Encruzilhada (Bahia). Reportedly, the boy was last seen on Sunday afternoon. Confessed killer Zenilton Barbosa 

dos Santon, 28, said he committed the crime because the victim has offended him. 

The crime is under investigation. 

Aug 18, 2005

Three children found dead on Tuesday afternoon. 

Reportedly, the victims, two aged 8 one of them aged 7, were last seen on Monday 

afternoon and were found in different places along the Almada river, 15 km far from 

the downtown of the municipality. According to the police, the victims, two girls and 

a boy, were strangled. 

Thank you.

Mr. SMITH. Lord Alton, thank you very much for that extremely 

sobering but candid assessment of the plight of the street children 

and for your extraordinary leadership. I have known and admired 

you for many, many years, and the work you have done with the 

Jubilee Campaign and the work you have done on a broad array 

of human rights issues. It is a privilege to have you here providing 

testimony to our Committee and to have you in these halls. 

So I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your 

work. You certainly live the Gospel and take it seriously that we 

are our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper. I know I am inspired by it, 

and I think many of us who have known and admired you are inspired by it. 

80

Let me just ask a couple of questions because you have answered 

so many questions and provided, I think, a roadmap for all of us 

to follow in terms of exposing this sense of impunity about the killing and maiming of these street children and their wrongful incarceration with adults. As you point out, if they were in juvenile detention, many of these problems would be mitigated, particularly 

the rapes and beatings that these children undergo when they are 

incarcerated. 

But in your observation of U.S. and U.K. and international programs, are they enough? Have we all done enough, or is there significant room to grow these programs and to expand them? The 

churches, like in Brazil where the church is relatively strong, what 

has been their partnership with NGOs as well as with the Government of Brazil and Philippines, again where the church is very 

strong, in trying to provide safe haven and help for these individuals? 

And then let me just ask you as well, has the G–8 done enough 

in raising this as an issue, something very specific on their agenda? 

Perhaps you and we, you in the U.K. and we in the United States 

Congress, could jointly pen a letter to our President and to your 

Prime Minister asking that it be raised in a way that the debt 

issue has been rightfully raised and some of the other North/South 

issues. But this is obviously an issue that is found all over the 

world; so we should try to get this on the agenda if it has not been 

adequately done in the past. And so if you could spend some time 

with those questions. 

Lord ALTON. Thank you. 

Taking your first question about what—whether we are doing 

enough, inevitably the answer is there is far more we can do. But 

I don’t want to give the impression that nothing is being done, because I have been enormously impressed by the work that is being 

done in particular countries. But never enough, given the scale of 

the problems. And I think because the problems have been accelerating the way I have described, that we need to take this issue 

a lot more seriously and link it with some of the other questions 

that we have been looking at, not least the trafficking question. 

There is a danger, it seems to me, in political life of things being 

sort of ‘‘flavor of the month’’ and moving on faddishly from one 

issue to another. And we feel we have ‘‘done’’ trafficking, so that 

is the end of that, so let’s move on to debt cancellation or something else. And there is a linkage between these questions. If we 

don’t properly train and mobilize the young people in these countries, and ensure that they have the opportunity to succeed in the 

future, first of all, they are going to be deeply alienated, and therefore, themselves, will be open to some of those very organizations 

that we are all too familiar with who are happy to exploit poverty, 

deprivation, alienation. Therefore, in terms of our own security in 

countries like Kenya, for instance, it is vitally important that alienation is addressed. 

Secondly, in light of things like the AIDS pandemic, these are 

some of the most important people in terms of sustaining the 

economies of these countries in the future, so they mustn’t just be 

seen as a problem. They should be seen as one of the greatest resources available to their nation. So for that reason I would cerVerDate Mar 21 2002 12:53 Jan 18, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00084 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\AGI\091305\23435.000 HINTREL1 PsN: SHIRL
81

tainly like to see a lot more going into the training of young people 

and provision of safe and secure housing of young people. To dump 

them in prisons or to leave them on the streets, open particularly 

to drug dealers and so on, is clearly not the way we should be dealing with this issue. 

You mentioned the faith communities and the role that they 

play. They are crucial. If they were not there—and there are many 

idealistic people who give their lives to this work—the situation 

would be disastrous. I am full of admiration for what they do and 

projects that Jubilee Action has supported. We raise privately 

about half a million pounds a year. It is small beer in terms of the 

scale of the problems, but it is a contribution, and just because you 

can’t solve all the problems, it is not a reason for not solving any 

of them. 

And so, for instance, Jubilee Action has funded the work of Sao 

Martino, which is the biggest agency in Rio dealing with children 

on the streets, and over the years we have been very proud to support that. The late Princess Diana opened a shelter there which is 

named for her, and it has been visited by our Prime Minister’s 

wife, Mrs. Blair, who has herself held receptions in Downing Street 

in order to raise money toward the funding of some of these 

projects. Our previous Prime Minister, Mr. Major, visited some of 

Sao Martino’s work to give it focus, and one of the children who 

actually came to dance in the cultural activities that were provided 

that evening was a street child who himself was subsequently shot 

dead. I know that that deeply moved Mr. Major. It is one of the 

reasons why he again got personally involved in this issue. 

So I think we need to get more political leaders involved in the 

way that you described. I think there is a lot of goodwill, and probably we do need to take it ultimately to the G–8, as you suggested, 

and get them to take it as seriously as they have taken, for instance, the relief of debt issue. 

Ultimately, though, you can remove debts, you can feed people, 

you can provide vaccination programs, and you should be doing all 

those things, but if you don’t resolve things like the conflict in 

countries like Sudan and Congo that is leading to so many children 

being killed, well, there is no point to doing all those other things, 

because there won’t be anybody left to feed or to inoculate or to 

care for. 

So all these things are inextricably linked, and we should see 

them as joined-up issues, not as separate issues. And I think that 

we need to give this the profile that certainly the issues—that trafficking had as a result of the sorts of measures that you took here 

in the Congress during the last decade. And I think now concerted 

action on a variety of fronts is needed. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much for your very graphic report, 

and I compliment you for the work that you have been doing in 

this area. You know, the problem of street children in Brazil has 

been a long-standing problem. As you probably know, many years 

ago, even before the gangs became more organized, and certainly 

before the event of illicit drugs, it seemed like Brazil had a problem 

with children, even at that time. They were—it was sort of perhaps 

like nuisances. They were not even in any kind of serious crimes. 

We went to Brazil in ’68 with the YMCA group and went up to the 

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favelas, and as a matter of fact, we were the only persons on the 

tour bus that were allowed to go into the favelas around Rio because they are up, as you know, on the hills, and the city is down 

in the valley. Even at that time, in ’68, the situation was bad. 

But today it seems as though—I guess my question is, it seems 

like the politics in Brazil has improved. They have elections. You 

have a labor leader who was supposed to be of the people elected 

to office. 

Have you seen any—do you think that this Brazilian problem 

with street children is just endemic, and it has just been inculcated 

and engrained over the years? Or do you see any—as a matter of 

fact, there was always the denial that the police would—on weekends they would simply take their uniforms off, wear street clothes, 

and their job was actually to see how many children could be killed 

because they were simply nuisances. Have you seen any more progressive admission that this seems like an engrained problem? I 

mean, there are problems all over Latin America, but Brazil has 

simply stood out for the last 50 years. Is there any attempt on the 

part of the new government or relatively new government to come 

to grips with this and talk about it as a national shame or national 

issue? 

Lord ALTON. I think you have put the question very well. When 

President Lula came to office, there was great hope and expectation 

that because of his own personal experience, having himself moved 

up from quite acute poverty in his childhood, that he would understand these issues and tackle them. And although Rome wasn’t 

built in a day, and one does hope that change will come, disillusionment was already setting in when I was taking evidence there 

just over a year ago. The sense that there hadn’t been the changes, 

the fundamental changes, the radical changes that people had 

hoped for from Lula followed the allegations of corruption within 

the administration which are beginning to dog them. 

So I hope that this surge of democracy and hope and expectation 

in a country which is fabulously wealthy in terms of its own natural resources, although those resources are very disproportionately spread will bring a response on this issue, because if it 

doesn’t, I think the consequences in terms of internal unrest and 

so on in the future will be enormous. 

I was very struck by what was said to us by a lot of the people 

we met about the need to tackle education. As a result of the grip 

of the favelas—and there are 680 favelas in Rio where 25 percent 

of the city’s population of 12 million live, and inside those favelas 

gangs like Red Command and Third Command have a total grip of 

those places. Now, in the early 1990s, you are right, the police 

themselves literally treated children as though they were vermin, 

and they would shoot them dead on the street. These days the police simply turn a blind eye and sometimes literally watch while 

one gang sells children to other gangs and people pay off old scores. 

I was very struck by the total lack of respect for life itself, and 

I do think that the civil society organizations, the faith groups, the 

media, everyone should do a lot more to promote the idea of the 

sanctity of human life in a country like Brazil. It certainly didn’t 

seem to me that there was any understanding of that concept 

whatsoever. 

83

Education, therefore, is a key. Many of the children from the 

favelas don’t go to school because they have to cross through the 

areas controlled by other gangs in order to get to those schools, so 

they are too frightened to go. And anyway, the only lucrative route 

to making any progress for any of these youngsters is seen to be 

by becoming part of the gangs themselves. So it just fuels the same 

cycle of despair, and that is, I think, the fundamental thing they 

have to tackle. 

We took evidence not just in Rio, but also in San Paulo and in 

Recife. Let us just underline the enormity of the sorts of things 

that we heard. I will mention, if I may, just one area in Recife 

which is called Inferninha, Little Hell, and it reads like pages out 

of Dante’s Inferno. Child prostitution is concentrated there. Forty 

children are known to be working as prostitutes, more than 60 a 

weekend. Some of the boys and girls are as young as 10. Some have 

been sent there by their parents to supplement their incomes. 

The men who exploit the children fall into three categories: The 

men who live in the neighborhoods; members of the police force, including senior officers; and foreigners who stay in posadas, small 

local hotels, and have children brought to them. 

When I asked whether the police simply closed their eyes to this, 

I received this reply: No, they go to the bars and the pimps every 

Tuesday for their share of the takings. 

We heard the appalling story from an aid worker of a faith-based 

organization about one young woman who had become a prostitute 

and was taken into that living hell by four men. They gang-raped 

her. When they were finished, they killed her, gouged out her eyes, 

ripped out her heart, and threw her into the sea. We also heard 

from, in the same area, about 15 killings in one town on the Sunday before we had met them. And again and again we heard about 

impunity of the police turning a blind eye, failing to carry out prosecutions. We met all the leading organizations dealing with street 

children, and there we heard the same story again and again and 

again. 

Now, I do believe that the Brazilian Government, like the Government of the Philippines, is very susceptible to proper, legitimate 

pressure, and this is an area in which I think the United States 

Administration really can play a leading role. I think you are seen 

as a friend and ally, and sometimes friends have to tell their 

friends the truth. If Brazil wishes to be the leading nation of South 

America, if it wants to play its part as one of the great economic 

nations of the future, it has to tackle this problem at source, because if it doesn’t, it will remain a stain on their character. 

Mr. PAYNE. I couldn’t agree with you more, and it seems, as it 

has been indicated, there is a strong church organization. And it 

just seems that, you know, with the new government and with the 

church having a concern all along, if these things get endemic and 

they are hard to turn around, as you indicated, it is difficult to turn 

around. 

Like I said, this has been going on, and quietly. It was not 

brought to attention, like I said, I was very active with the YMCA, 

and we saw it as a problem at that time before—like I said, before 

there was the gangs that are there today and before drugs become 

a big issue. I mean, a kid would maybe smoke a cigarette and sit 

84

on the hood of a car just very, very, you know, nuisances. But I 

think that because the police were so—as a matter of fact, one of 

the favelas they allowed me to go in, they said no authorities are 

allowed to go up in the favelas. They do not have—haven’t seen a 

doctor, haven’t seen authority, have not seen a government worker, 

have not seen any kind of authority at that time. That was in the 

1960s. And I am sure that in many of these areas, the law enforcement people do not go into those areas. 

Lord ALTON. Absolutely right. And you can be encouraged, 

though, in one agency, a Catholic aid agency that I visited in Recife, there was a lady there who had organized the women of that 

area to hold a protest through the streets complaining about the 

killings of people. What had happened to her, her 25-year-old son 

died in her arms on the street after being mowed down in a shooting. It was a shot fired in a case of mistaken identity. His mother 

told me this: ‘‘We are overwhelmed by all this violence.’’

The Brazilian society regards killing as normal. Some people believe that if the children are on the streets, it serves them right 

if they are killed. We are trying to confront and fight this line of 

thinking. In telling me, she demanded to know why firearms 

should be so freely available to children. She said that children 

who can’t even get food to eat can get a gun. Seventy-four percent 

of the killings are by gun. ‘‘I never saw a gun in my life,’’ she said, 

‘‘and now they are everywhere.’’ But she and the group of women 

in that area had taken action, and they had seen a reduction in the 

number of killings during the period following the demonstration. 

And one of the projects that they were running also, to me, was 

a sign of hope. Five hundred children in that church-led project 

were being given computer literacy skills, and an Irish businessman who traveled with me to that favela took out his checkbook 

and wrote a check to enable that project to double in size. There 

are now 1,000 children from the most violent favela; they have 

been given computer literacy skills and which will one day give 

them jobs, and hopefully that will help break that cycle. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. I appreciate your comments. 

Mr. PITTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And again, thank you, Lord Alton, for your sobering and very 

compelling testimony. I, too, have the greatest admiration for your 

work and have been privileged to work collaboratively with you on 

human rights on a number of occasions. 

I want to say that I visited the compounds, the homes in the 

Bombay region that you and Teen Challenge sponsor there, and 

these compounds, these hostels outside of Bombay for children of 

the sex workers, they are beautiful little islands of hope and healing and happiness just 2 hours from the red light district of Bombay and the dark despair of the prostitutes and the brothels, the 

exploitation that occurs there. So thank you—for I know firsthand 

from visiting the compounds, they have them for girls, separate 

ones for the women—it is a wonderful work of restoration to those 

children involved in that industry. 

You skipped over one slide on page four where you mentioned 

the term ‘‘little planes.’’ I wonder if you would elaborate on that. 

What part do illegal drugs play in this whole problem of street children? Then remembering that this is a public hearing, that this 

85

will echo across the country as this issue is given publicity in the 

light of day, how can private citizens, how can religious groups, 

how can charitable organizations here best contribute to helping 

solve this problem around the world? If you would talk about that, 

please. 

Lord ALTON. Well, thank you, Congressman Pitts. Thank you 

particularly for mentioning the projects in Bombay. 

They are a good illustration of what perhaps people can do, what 

private individuals can do. It is worth mentioning, Jubilee was able 

to establish those projects because of the generosity of a Scottish 

comedian, Billy Connolly, who hosted an event at Hammersmith in 

London, and gave all the proceeds, about 100,000 pounds, to help 

establish those houses in Bombay. Olivia Harrison, the widow of 

George Harrison, one of the Beatles from my own City of Liverpool, 

has been extraordinarily generous, both in Romania, referred to 

earlier on by the Chairman of the proceedings, but also in Latin 

America, in Brazil. She has been very generous in funding a number of these projects. 

So individuals can play their part, whether it is thousands of 

pounds or whether it is just a few pounds or a few dollars. People 

can make some kind of difference. 

The truth is, we often feel a bit like the boy in Robert Louis 

Stevenson’s book, the one that says, ‘‘The world is so big and I am 

so small, I do not like it at all, at all.’’ You can feel intimidated 

by the scale of these problems. But people are making a difference 

and doing some fantastic work. 

You will be hearing from Teresa Santos a little later on about the 

work she is personally doing in Rio and her network there. People 

like her are doing some wonderful things on the ground helping 

street children. 

There is a tea company, based in my own former constituency in 

Liverpool, who took up the challenge about India, and they agreed 

to give a percentage of the proceeds from the sale of a particular 

brand of tea they manufactured to support those hostels in India. 

So there are lots of ways, individually, collectively, corporately, 

that people can respond. 

You asked about the role of drugs. I think this touches back on 

the point Congressman Payne was making a few moments ago 

about what has changed in Brazil. In the early nineties, as well as 

accessibility to guns, there became much greater accessibility to 

drugs and the emergence of what is a ruinous drug culture. 

Formerly, Brazil was simply a transit company for the notorious 

producers of Columbia, Bolivia and Peru, but today, Brazil ranks 

only after the United States as the second biggest consumer of cocaine. In those 680 favelas in Rio, that has led to the emergence 

of a no-go area, as we have already discussed, controlled by rival 

gangs like Red Command and Third Command, who organize and 

arm children. Children as young as 4 have guns and are used, as 

I have said, as ‘‘little planes,’’ that is the colloquialism, the language of the street. They are the ones who transmit the drugs from 

place to place and the proceeds as well, and they take messages between the sellers and the buyers. Those children then get caught 

up in the escalating violence, and they are effectively child soldiers, 

by any other name. 

86

Mr. PITTS. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Just one final question, Lord Alton. In your written 

statement, you pointed out that very many well-known figures, including Paul McCartney and others, have supported this. Is that 

past tense, or are they still actively promoting the cause of street 

children? It seems like it needs a shot of adrenaline, which they 

can certainly help provide. 

Lord ALTON. You are right. It does need a shot of adrenaline. It 

needs others to come to the fore. But, in fairness, they were not 

just one-night stands. They have continued to support. Olivia Harrison in particular, I would pay a great tribute to her for the support she has given over a very long period of time now, and recently decided to give I think 10 percent of the proceeds of the reissuing of the My Sweet Lord album that George Harrison made 

to Street Children Project. So there are some generous people 

around, and we should never underestimate that even given the 

scale of the problems that we see. 

There is though far more that we as politicians can also do and 

the pressure we put on governments through our Ambassadors. We 

can encourage people to use the Web site I referred to earlier to 

fill in petitions, to contact their Senators and Congressmen, members of Parliament and members of other legislatures, so there is 

a concerted worldwide approach to this problem. 

Mr. SMITH. Let me just say finally, thank you again for your 

leadership, Lord Alton. 

You know, all things must pass. This must pass, too. I think you 

made a very good point. Your testimony, the information you have 

conveyed, the best practices, that a child can’t be incarcerated with 

older people—as you pointed out, they are five times more apt to 

be sexually assaulted and all the other terrible things. We will use 

this Committee to energize or re-energize our efforts, I assure you. 

But your testimony has been pivotal, and I thank you for it, as well 

as your leadership. 

Lord ALTON. I know those street children will thank you for the 

efforts and commitment you are putting in. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you so much. 

Let me now ask our third panel of distinguished citizens to make 

their way to the witness table, beginning first with Father Shay 

Cullen. Father Cullen is a missionary priest to the Philippines 

from Ireland, and a member of the Missionary Society of St. 

Columban, an Irish organization working for human rights around 

the world. In 1974, he established the People’s Recovery Empowerment Development Assistance (PREDA) Foundation. He was an invited delegate to the conference drafting the Convention on the 

Rights of the Child in Helsinki of 1989 and was nominated for the 

Nobel Peace Prize in 2001. 

Father Shay was awarded the German Human Rights of the City 

of Weimar Award in December 2000 and the Italian Human Rights 

Award at the City of Ferrara in 2001. Numerous newspaper articles and TV documentaries have reported the success of his work 

protecting children and campaigning for human rights. 

We will then hear from Teresa Santos, who works as a network 

coordinator for Rede Viva-RJ, Rio de Janeiro. Viva Network is an 

87

NGO in Roster Consultive Status with the Economic and Social 

Council of the United Nations. They have 66 network initiatives in 

43 countries linking 16,000 workers, reaching 160,000 children. 

One of these networks is located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Rede 

Viva-RJ is a network of faith-based organizations and businesses, 

NGOs and other institutions working with children at-risk on the 

streets of Rio de Janeiro. 

In the early 1990s in Rio de Janeiro, Ms. Santos built and operated two shelter homes for street children and is actively engaged 

in bringing practical solutions to transform the lives of these children. 

Finally, we will hear from Andy Sexton, who is currently the 

International Director for Children at Risk, OAS!S International, 

based in Uganda. He also serves as Chairperson of the Global 

Strategy with Street Children Initiative. Mr. Sexton was a co-designer and trainer for the OAS!S Streetwise Course, which provides 

training for street-children workers. Mr. Sexton also established 

street children’s initiatives in three cities in Zimbabwe between 

1995 and 2002. 

Previously, Mr. Sexton served as a workshop facilitator on Child 

Development and Best Practices in Children’s Ministry in Mozambique; Street Children, at the Viva Cutting Edge Conference; Children at Risk, at the Scripture Union International Conference; and 

on The Future of Streets Ahead, one of the longest-serving street 

children projects in Zimbabwe in 2002. 

Mr. Sexton is also Co-Founder of the Bulawayo Task Force on 

Street Children, a coordinating body for street-children work in the 

city. 

If you could begin, Father, with your testimony, and then we will 

continue with each of the other witnesses. 

STATEMENT OF FATHER SHAY CULLEN, FOUNDER, PREDA 

FOUNDATION, PHILIPPINES 

Father CULLEN. I will make more of a summary of the presentation for the interests of brevity. 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, all of your prepared testimonies 

and any attachments will be made part of the record. 

Father CULLEN. Right. Well, last week, before I left the Philippines, I have been working with street children. That has been 

my life work for the last 35 years. One particular group, as I say 

in my paper, is a Filipino-American boy living under a bridge, 

abandoned by parents and society. These are children addicted to 

sniffing industrial glue to ward off hunger, and they suffer malnutrition and parasites. They live in fear of police beatings, brutality, arrests and detention without trial. They live in dehumanizing conditions. 

I would just like to point out for the record, this was captured 

in a television program by ATN and shown on CNN. I would like 

to submit a copy of that for the record. 

A lot has been said already here today about the condition of the 

children on the streets and in prison, and I will not elaborate much 

more. But there are reasons. We have to look at the root causes 

of much of this problem of street children. 

88

The children themselves are typical children of the streets. They 

are vagrants, and in some cities, I have to mention, particularly 

Davao in Mindanao, they become victims of the shadowy death 

squads that act with impunity in executing teenagers, leading us 

to believe that they are government-sanctioned in some way. As we 

heard from Lord Alton, this is going on in Brazil. But we have a 

big problem with this in the Philippines. 

Some years ago, we at the PREDA Foundation took it upon ourselves to confront the mayor of the city, Mayor de Guzman, and we 

had strong evidence that would indicate that he had the responsibility or accountability for all the dead children. And we were, of 

course, sued by the mayor because of our speaking out. We won our 

case, and we are trying to support the right of human rights’ workers to speak out to the Philippine Government and ask them to just 

listen to us. They are of goodwill, but they don’t seem to be too interested in the condition of the street children. 

Yes, we have been harassed because of this. We have been 

threatened. We get death threats and have been brought to court 

to be deported and charged in many cases by those who oppose our 

work. 

But street children also end up trafficked into the sex industry, 

and much of our work has been to confront the traffickers and the 

sex mafia, which is internationally based, both European nationals, 

American nationals. At this time, we have one trafficker on trial, 

and we are pursuing cases against him, an American national, and 

a partner, an Australian national. So we take direct action against 

the abusers of the children. 

We have this problem of the children being considered as pests 

by the business community. Many have gone on the record in the 

business community in the Philippines saying they should be eliminated. These are people looking for maybe loans from banks, from 

international institutions, and we have to bring a sense of awareness and some values to the business community not to take such 

an attitude toward street children. 

I will just correct some statistics for the record. In 1998, a government report put the figure at 1.2 million street children in the 

Philippines and 70,000 of them in metro Manila alone. Another estimate done by ECPAT, which is an NGO, approximately 1.5 million children on the streets. In short, today, that would be at least 

2 million all over the Philippines, an estimated number. We have 

to look at the spiritual paralysis of the lack of spiritual values and 

the human neglect, the failure to live up to the standards of respect 

for human life as being behind this. 

The Philippines is actually a fractured democracy. As we will 

hear, the feudal practices persist, and the greater part of the national budget is dedicated to servicing foreign debt and paying a 

bloated bureaucracy, which are somewhat wasted, and money on 

fake and overpriced development projects. There is very little available for social projects that would benefit street children. 

Foreign aid is wasted when it is poured into the pockets of rich 

politicians. This is where the foreign aid projects, even loans 

through the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, should 

be scrutinized and monitored carefully. This is taxpayer money 

from American citizens in some cases, and this has to be scrutiVerDate Mar 21 2002 12:53 Jan 18, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00092 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\AGI\091305\23435.000 HINTREL1 PsN: SHIRL
89

nized, because the cronies of the politicians, I am sad to say, they 

corner all of these funds for themselves, even set up fake NGOs. 

Disaster relief, in our experience, has been squandered in the 

past. We have had a very sad experience, recently looking, when 

we tried to expand our homes. We have existing homes for children 

we rescue from the brothels and another home for children we rescue from the prison system, because we are active in that rescue 

program, and we are trying to establish more. 

But just to show you some of the practical problems we are up 

against, when we asked some politicians to give us buildings that 

were actually abandoned after the relief, the expenditure of the relief money for Pinatubo victims, these structures are, 10 years 

later, rusting, big buildings, all wasted. They said, no, they are 

going to give those buildings for a car park, for the Department of 

Public Works and Highways, but not for the children. So we are 

campaigning in the Philippines for simple gestures like this from 

government. So that hard-hearted attitude, to neither let the children go or help them, has to be confronted. So that is part of our 

work, to increase public awareness. 

We do a lot of positive things, and there are changes. We had big 

changes by lobbying to the Supreme Court, and this is a very positive development. Over a year ago, they started changing the rules 

of court, which enabled us to then put the legal wheels in motion 

and to get many children out of prison. They are assigned to us and 

to our custody, and then we reintegrate them very quickly into 

school and back into their families. 

It is not an institutionalization of these children, but it is a halfway home, where they get values formed; they get a sense of dignity, a sense of affirmation. There are no guards, no gates; it is a 

whole new system. And we want to share this capacity-building 

with other NGOs, so they, too, can treat children in a positive manner, which is not detention. We have 55 of these children living in 

an open center, and they are not criminals. And they don’t run 

away. So positive things can be done, and change can come. We 

have seen that in the change of attitude in some of the government, the response of government agencies in recent months. But 

much more has to be done. 

One particular case that comes to mind: A 14-year-old boy, Francisco. He is a Filipino-American. As you said, Mr. Chairman, in 

your own introduction, a lot of the street kids even today, for so 

many years after the bases close, we take care of these children. 

Particularly, we have a special program for Filipino-American kids, 

and many of them are now very successful and come to school and 

college, but some are still on the streets. We just found some more 

of these kids living in these terrible conditions. 

Just for the record, we took, in 1993, we did take a class action 

suit in the International Court of Complaints here in Washington 

on behalf of the children. Unfortunately, the court ruled against 

our case and said that these women were unmarried women who 

provided sexual services to U.S. service personnel. And they were 

engaged in elicit acts of prostitution, and therefore, it could not be 

the basis of any legal claim. So we failed in that regard. But the 

Women’s Caucus in Congress very helpfully came to the rescue, 

90

and they made a recommendation to USAID, who did give some 

money. 

So all of my other background to the nature of these children is 

in this report. I will not go on much longer. But I would like to say, 

we have a few points of recommendations, positive things that can 

be done that we would like to put forward as a positive way. 

In collaboration with our friends in the British Parliament, Lord 

Alton, and here, our friends in Congress, friends of the Philippines, 

to strengthen existing expectations for good governance in the Philippines, so that existing resources and the finances made available 

through the World Bank and the ADB loans and other forms of aid 

will be used to diminish waste and abuse and corruption in government. This is number one. Because we are dealing with poverty. 

Street children are there because of poverty and exploitation in 

the home. Poverty alleviation by supporting fair trade and positive 

attitudes. We support ourselves financially. At least we provide 25 

percent of our own funds through fair trade. We have hundreds of 

livelihood projects all over the Philippines with farmers, and we export all these products. 

Getting markets: Our main market is Europe, so we sell their 

goods and have the funds, and we provide livelihood for hundreds 

of families of children who would otherwise be on the streets or in 

prostitution. 

Prevention: We do expanding finance and help and support for 

preventive education. It is very important to change public opinion 

in their attitude toward street children. So we do a lot of that, and 

we also have seminars and workshops for government officials, 

hoping that they, too, will do their duty toward street children. 

Debt servicing: Obligations to be reduced is another big help, if 

it is linked to good governance and an end to corruption. But that 

link and that monitoring, I think, is very, very important. 

Directing aid toward community-based projects, again, as I said 

earlier, for benefiting the parents of street children. And as we do 

encourage, of course, friends in Congress, as Lord Alton said, 

friends are there to tell friends how life can be better. So we do 

a robust encouragement, and support and pressure to Filipino authorities will help. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Father Cullen follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF FATHER SHAY CULLEN, FOUNDER, PREDA FOUNDATION, PHILIPPINES

INTRODUCTION

Dear Honorable Members: 

Last week before I left the Philippines to come here, I was working with street 

children. One particular group led by a Filipino-American street boy lives under a 

bridge abandoned by their parents and society. They are addicted to sniffing industrial glue to ward off hunger and they suffer malnutrition, parasites, and live in fear 

of police beatings, arrest and detention without trial in dehumanized conditions. 

They are typical children of the streets, vagrants and in some other cities, such 

as Davao in Mindanao, they become victims of shadowy death squads that act with 

impunity in executing the teenagers leading us to believe they are government sanctioned. The silence and inaction of the authorities despite the mounting death toll 

is for us a sign of approval. When we protested the killings some years ago we were 

sued by the city mayor for defamation, but won our case when we proved we were 

merely defending the human rights of the children and freedom of speech on their 

behalf. We have been harassed, threatened with death and brought to court to be 

91

deported for working to protect the street children and defend their rights to experience childhood and not to be abused. 

Street kids are considered pests by some of the business community—as vermin 

to be exterminated. But they have committed no crime and are the victims of the 

wrongdoing of uncaring and corrupt politicians and abusive, impoverished parents. 

According to UNICEF, an estimated 100 million children worldwide live at least 

part of their time on the streets (see below for statistics in other countries). 

In the Philippines, a government report in 1998 put the figure at 1.2 million 

street children—about 70,000 of them in Metro Manila alone. Another report estimates that there are approximately 1.5 million children on the streets working as 

beggars, pickpockets, drug abusers and child prostitutes (ECPAT). Today, the number of children and youth living part of their lives on the streets in the Philippines 

could reach two million out of a total population of 84 million. 

This is the result of human neglect, spiritual paralysis, greed and political irresponsibility that allows and exacerbates the entrenchment of poverty in an unjust 

social system. The Philippines is a fractured democracy, where feudal practices persist and where the greater national budget is dedicated to servicing foreign debt and 

paying a bloated bureaucracy, or is wasted on fake or overpriced development 

projects. There is very little for social programs. 

We believe that foreign aid is wasted when poured into the coffers of rich politicians for projects they design to benefit their own family businesses or those of their 

cronies. Even disaster relief money is squandered and dissipated through corrupt 

practices. 

Homes and shelters for street children are urgently needed. We are trying to establish more. When we requested last month the use of a government building constructed with relief funds given for the victims of the volcanic eruption of Mount 

Pinatubo (and soon abandoned), we were told it was better used for officials’ offices 

and vehicles. 

Advocacy and public awareness is achieved by workshops and training seminars 

on the rights of children that PREDA gives to members of the government, the public, students and teachers. The police and prosecutors are specially targeted audiences, as they inflict the most harm on children. The training and awareness—

building sessions teach as many as 11,000 people every year. 

Street children are always hungry. They leave home hungry and beg on the street 

where they are vulnerable to sexual exploitation, disease, malnutrition, illiteracy, 

abuse and trafficking for sexual exploitation. 

Most male street children in the Philippines are in conflict with the law at some 

time and as many as 20,000 see the inside of a prison cell, where they are mixed 

with pedophiles, drug addicts, murderers and rapists. The street children are exposed to HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis in the prisons. 

One of the street children we are helping is a 14-year-old boy I call Francisco. 

He is a Filipino-American living on the streets—abandoned like many others when 

the military bases pulled out in 1992 and thousands of children were left stranded. 

All support ceased and many children fathered by American servicemen became 

street children. 

We filed a class action suit in 1993 on their behalf in the International Court of 

Complaints here in Washington, DC, to establish these Filipino-American children’s 

rights to assistance. They have been consigned to live on the streets in hovels or 

slums in unimaginable poverty. Our case did not prosper. The court ruled that the 

children were the products of unmarried women who provided sexual services to US 

service personnel in Olongapo, Subic Bay and Angeles City and were therefore engaged in illicit acts of prostitution. Such illegal activity could not be the basis for 

any legal claim. 

The Women’s Congressional Caucus, however, recommended that USAID provide 

financial assistance for throwaway Filipino children on the streets of the Philippines. They gave, I believe, a sum close to $650,000 to a US organization, some 

of which was distributed to various charities, although none went to the PREDA 

Foundation. 

Through the PREDA Foundation we are doing all we can for the street children, 

the Filipino-American kids and those street kids put in jail, where they suffer the 

worst punishment of all for a street child—the unjust deprivation of freedom. Thousands of street kids are behind bars for petty misdemeanors and no other crime 

than being homeless on the streets, taking food without paying to ease their hunger 

or, when no food is to be had, sniffing cheap industrial glue to ease the pangs. 

Solutions can be found in fair trade and by creating jobs for the parents of street 

kids. This is one of our interventions to break the cycle of poverty passed on from 

parents to children. Using our own financial resources, we have saved hundreds of 

street children and Fil-Am kids. Our funds come from PREDA Fair Trading, raised 

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from marketing the products from development projects PREDA has established for 

the poor. The products are then exported and the parents of street kids or those 

in dire circumstances are employed when possible. 

By providing direct service homes, feeding programs, street education and advocacy to change the system, our work for children has continued unabated and we 

have been able to save many from the streets, bring them to a residential home, 

give values formation and formal and non-formal education. Many have good jobs 

today. This work still goes on. We have a home for former street kids who had been 

imprisoned, some of whom were never charged and others were not found guilty of 

any misdemeanor or crime. Some as young as eight and ten years old. 

We are asking that foreign aid assistance be focused, directed and used to bring 

change in protecting the rights of street children, that World Bank loans and ADB 

loans be more closely monitored for waste and abuse and that child support programs be a component of every aid package. 

WHO ARE THE STREET CHILDREN?

Street children are those children who, when they experience family problems, 

hunger, neglect and domestic violence, escape from their homes and live part-time 

on the streets. When they are settled and know street survival techniques, they return at times to their hovels and shacks to visit their families and bring food for 

their younger brothers and sisters. When they see that the food they bring is not 

enough, they return to the street and their brothers and sisters sometimes follow 

them, looking for the source of the food. 

Parents at times send them out to beg and scavenge and even prostitute them 

or sell them in to bonded labor. We cannot forget the children born of teenage street 

children and aborted in backstreet clinics. 

Other street children are child workers, permanently on the streets and engaged 

in scavenging, child labor, begging, peddling drugs and petty theft. Many end up 

in jail. Their rights are frequently abused by the police while on the streets. The 

girls are sometimes raped in custody and forced to hand over their daily earnings. 

Others are accused falsely for crimes committed by street children who have been 

recruited into gangs controlled and protected by the police. The gangs of street children prey on the younger and weaker children and sometimes make them sex 

slaves, using drugs, food and fear to control and dominate them. The street children 

are trained to be drug couriers. Although innocent, the younger and unprotected can 

suffer untold abuse by the other street youth. When in the jails, they can be mixed 

with criminals, rapists and pedophiles. 

They are runaways from dysfunctional, broken homes with an abusive parent. In 

the home, usually a hovel and poor environment beside a polluted canal or malarial 

swamp, they suffer sexual abuse, rape, physical abuse, verbal battering, rejection, 

malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and dengue. 

Most street children are illiterate. Having no incentive, money or support and encouragement to study, they have dropped out of elementary school. They join street 

gangs for their own protection and use industrial glue as a mind- and mood-altering 

tranquilizer. They work selling plastic bags, newspapers and flowers or begging for 

a syndicate. Many are controlled by pimps and sold to sex tourists on street corners 

or brought to the casa, a house of prostitution. 

Street children are the poorest of the poor; they are the most vulnerable and 

weakest and unless they are helped they will be the HIV/AIDS victims of the future. 

They are forced to be child prostitutes that attract foreign sex tourists. They are 

susceptible to becoming criminals or even terrorists angry at the adult world that 

gave them life in the worst misery imaginable. The adult world has done this to 

the children. 

GENDER BALANCE

The gender balance of the street children is roughly estimated to be two-thirds 

boys and one-third girls. No exhaustive research has been done to determine this. 

Based on the reports of charity workers, this is a fair comment. The groups of children are divided into those who live on the streets permanently and those who live 

part-time on the streets but go home every three or four days for a few hours or 

a day and then return to the streets. 

They sleep in doorways, in push carts, under plastic sheets, under bridges, in 

drainage pipes, in derelict buildings, in abandoned cars and buses. Some even make 

shacks in the trees along the fashionable boulevards. They favor being with the rich 

dead in cemeteries where the tombs have roofs. They sleep in doorways on the pavements or in the church porch. They live along the sea walls and canals. 

93

HOW YOUNG ARE THEY?

The children on the streets a few days a week are the youngest, from seven to 

twelve years old. The older boys and girls on the street who have been there for 

one or two years—that is, permanently on the streets—are aged 13 to 16, although 

nine- and ten-year-old children are also in this group. 

WHERE DO STREET CHILDREN COME FROM?

The unstoppable march of global materialism and economic domination further 

enriches the elite and plunges the poor into even greater poverty, increasing the 

number of street children and displaced families. 

Poverty drives hungry farmers into the arms of the communist rebels and the 

ranks of the Muslim rebels and other insurgents. They recruit the children as child 

soldiers and expose them to terrible dangers, violence and killings. 

These child soldiers are mentally and emotionally damaged and flee the war for 

the streets. As the economy worsens, poverty increases, political violence grows and 

more and more impoverished rural families are driven from their homes in the 

countryside because of an insurgency and rebellion. 

FROM THE STREET TO THE JAIL

Frequently arrested, street children are jailed without proper legal procedures. 

They are at times treated as non-persons. In a society where money is the measure 

of human worth, the children have no value. In the subhuman conditions of overcrowded jails and mixed with adults, they are deprived of light, learning, exercise, 

family and companionship. 

They are sodomized and sexually abused by adult prisoners in overcrowded cells 

without even enough space to lie down together. Half of the prisoners have to stand 

while the other half sleeps. The only schooling the street children receive inside is 

how to be a criminal. They suffer systematic violation of their human rights from 

the day they are accused and are incarcerated without due process of law. When 

they do get out, they return to the streets and are able to organize street gangs of 

children to engage in crime. They are psychologically damaged and traumatized and 

sometimes deranged. They face the dangers of tuberculosis and other diseases while 

in the prison. 

WHAT ARE THE INITIATIVES ON BEHALF OF STREET CHILDREN?

Community-based 

The children are helped where they are—on the streets. Street contact workers 

are trained to conduct non-formal education and provide basic needs. Some are successful in getting the children off the streets and into school. This project needs constant follow-up, monitoring and financial support. 

Street children themselves are sometimes trained to become street educators 

themselves. They belong to the peer group and are respected and accepted. They 

help to break down the lack of trust that street children have of social workers and 

helpers. Maximum participation of children in the work is a sign of best practice. 

Non-formal education on the street is an indication of this. 

Jobs for street children 

The children are helped to find income-earning activities to support themselves 

on the streets, such as washing cars, guarding parking areas, working as shine 

boys, selling products on the streets and selling plastic bags around the markets. 

Sadly, some are made professional beggars, drug couriers, pimps and child prostitutes. 

Education 

This is an approach that tries to bring responsive children into the school system 

by providing support and encouragement and regular follow-up and monitoring. 

Livelihood opportunities for parents of the street children are sometimes proved 

by the project. Thus the child becomes valuable to the family, as the child is a 

source of financial assistance. 

Drop-in centers for street children are common in the major cities, but they are 

vulnerable to the children’s love of the freedom they have on the streets. The dropout rate can be high. There is the added difficulty of providing sufficient care that 

will make a difference in the lives of the children. The centers provide basic needs 

and shelter but the programs are usually short-lived. When children do stay longer, 

they are referred to centers that provide care for the long term. 

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Residential live-in centers are expensive projects and there are not many of them. 

Unless they are placed in an area remote from the street and efforts are made to 

locate and bring the parents into the process of helping the children, their success 

rates will be low, as many children will be enticed to go back to the streets. 

Forming special action groups of street children 

The goal of these strategies is to help street children organize themselves for selfprotection and help. Some have been successful. They feed each other, run for help 

to organizations like PREDA in emergencies, bring medical help and in the past 

have even made collections to pay extortion money to police to release their group 

members. Today they call on PREDA’s legal officers to get their group members out 

of jail. 

Street contact for children 

This project entails regular contact by dedicated social workers with groups of 

street children. The workers relate with the children to win their trust, offer legal 

and personal protection against acts of abuse by the authorities and work to release 

the children from jails and holding cells or to get charges against them dismissed. 

The project provides basic needs such as clothes, food, medical help and shelter 

when needed. Efforts are made to contact parents and enable the child to visit the 

parents. Part-time work for older children is provided when possible. 

Livelihood projects for parents are at times an aspect of street contact, as are 

meetings, outings and non-formal education. This model is being implemented by 

the PREDA Foundation, Olongapo City and other agencies. There is no attempt to 

take the children off the streets unless they are willing to enroll in school or agree 

to take non-formal education courses. 

TRUE STORIES: JORDAN, ARTE, ANGEL AND HAKIM

Jordan, a 16-year-old Afro-American, is the son of an American sailor who was 

stationed at the US Naval Base in Subic Bay, Philippines, in the 1980s. (The base 

closed in 1992.) Like thousands of other Filipino-American children, Jordan was 

abandoned and left on the streets. 

He endured racial slurs and discrimination because of his dark skin color and he 

was ridiculed as the child of a prostitute. His mother died of disease. He was a car 

washer who had no educational attainment but possessed high intelligence. He was 

recruited at 14 by the Communist rebels and made a child soldier for six months, 

after which he was captured by the military during an encounter. He was released 

after six months but returned to the streets, where he became a gang member and 

survived by washing cars and becoming a petty thief. He was found by a charity 

and helped recover through a program of recovery based on affirmation, esteembuilding, spiritual formation, character development and skills training. He is now 

on the way to a better life. 

Arte, 10, was a street boy. He ran away from a broken home and lived on the 

streets selling ice candies. He slept in doorways, begged at traffic lights and never 

went to school. He was falsely accused of robbery and put in jail while the police 

reported that they were defeating crime. He had no judicial hearing for four months, 

was beaten, made to work for the adult criminals and forced to eat off the floor. 

He was found in the Malabon City Jail in a small jail cell overcrowded with 88 inmates but designed only for ten. It was so crowded that not all could lie down to 

sleep at the same time. He had skin diseases. His only possession when found with 

many other street children behind bars was a pair of dirty cotton shorts and a torn 

t-shirt. He was rescued by a charity and is safe and receiving education. 

Angel, 11, grew up in the countryside. Her father was a tenant farmer who was 

indebted to the land owner and gave 40 percent of his harvest to him, rendering 

him unable to feed his own family. Angel grew up with six brothers and a sister. 

At age 11, she was accosted by her 56-year-old uncle, who took her from the fields 

to the riverbank and raped her. 

She ran home, but her parents would not believe her and were angry that she 

had made such an accusation. They were afraid of starting a family disruption because they owed money to the uncle’s family and were ashamed of the publicity that 

would result if they believed her and filed a complaint. 

Angel told her teacher, who reported it to the police. The accused uncle and Angel’s parents negotiated a deal with the police. The family of the uncle would pay 

Angel’s parents compensation in the form of debt relief. Such settlements are common occurrences. The child and her rights as a victim were forgotten, the crime was 

covered up and she was blamed of inventing it. The abuser carried on abusing other 

children. 

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Angel was hurt and angry when her uncle scolded her for telling what he had 

done. She ran away from home and persuaded a bus driver to take her to town. 

There she joined a gang of street children, both girls and boys, who slept under a 

bridge and ate castaway food from the market. She did small jobs and survived on 

the street like this for six months. 

Local pimps forced her to become a child prostitute until she was rescued by a 

charity. 

Jordan’s half-brother, Hakim, was also abandoned to live on the streets at age 14 

when his mother died. He was taken in by a charity and sent to school. At first 

he was successful, but he was led astray by a gang and resorted to petty crime and 

a life on the streets. After two years, he was drawn into a drug gang and became 

a pusher. An envious rival ambushed him one night and stabbed him to death. 

Hakim was 16. 

WORLDWIDE STATISTICS ON CHILDREN

• At least 100 million children worldwide are believed to live at least part of their 

time on the streets. These street children are first and foremost working children. 

(UNICEF, 29 March 1994)

• One in five children in the developing world have to work.

• 5.7 million children work under especially horrific circumstances, such as in the 

virtual slavery of bonded labor.

• In Southeast Asia, between 30% and 35% of sex workers are aged 12 to 17.

• At least two-thirds of Egyptian street children resort to drug abuse.

• About one million children are exploited each year in the sex industry. This is 

fueled mainly by local demand, although sex tourism is also a significant problem. 

The Internet has the potential to promote this and to disseminate child pornography on a global scale.

• There are around 200,000 child soldiers forced to fight in the Democratic Republic 

of Congo, and thousands more elsewhere.

• Between 8,000 and 10,000 children are killed or maimed by land mines every 

year.

• Abortion is legal in 54 countries, accounting for 61% of the world’s population. 

Source: Alan Guttmacher Institute

• 150 million children under five are malnourished.

• 56% of children under five in Bangladesh are at least moderately underweight.

• 19% of children have no access to clean drinking water.

• Worldwide, more than a million children are in prison. Many are imprisoned for 

minor offenses such as vagrancy, begging, smoking or non-attendance at school. 

In the Philippines, an estimated 20,000 children a year see the inside of a prisoner detention cell. (Newsweek)

• 246 million children around the word are exploited for their labor, most often in 

dangerous environments such as mines or factories, or in situations where they 

are exposed to harmful substances.

• Approximately 1.2 million children are trafficked each year, many for exploitation 

by adults either as child prostitutes, child brides, street beggars or workers in 

cruel and extreme forms of dangerous labor. They migrate and run away from 

these situations and live as migrants and street dwellers.

• These children are often arrested and detained as illegal immigrants once they 

arrive at their destination.

• Worldwide, 13.4 million children under 15 have lost their mother or both parents 

to AIDS. By 2010, this number will have more than doubled, adding to a crisis 

for many extended families and communities.

• Half of the 57.4 million people displaced by war are children, and millions of these 

have been separated from their families in this time of crisis.

• Globally, one in four children lives in abject poverty. Their families survive on less 

than $1 per day.

• In the 1990s, more than two million children died as a result of armed conflict.

• 20 million children have had to flee their homes due to conflict and the violation 

of human rights.

• Around 30,000 children under five die each day, mostly from preventable causes. 

For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, 3,000 die from malaria every day. (Source: 

UNICEF)

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Mr. SMITH. Father, thank you so very much for your testimony 

and for your great work. 

Teresa Santos. 

STATEMENT OF MS. TERESA SANTOS, NETWORK 

COORDINATOR, REDE VIVA–RJ, BRAZIL 

Ms. SANTOS. Good afternoon respected Committee Members, ladies and gentleman. Before sharing a bit more about Brazil—a lot 

has been already said—I want to express my sympathy for the victims of Katrina and especially the children there. Talking about 

children, street children, in my written testimony, I started sharing 

the testimony of a boy that we helped take out of the streets, and 

his name is Joao. This boy has been an encouragement to me to 

press on in the work that I believe I was called to do and the work 

that I have done among the street children. 

Joao was 11 years old when he was taken out of the streets, and 

his life shows exactly how thousands of other children ended up on 

the streets and how a young boy can easily get involved in the drug 

business and how a young boy, who is Black, who has been on the 

streets, can be easily excluded from society. Until today, he is fighting to find a job; he is fighting to be an honest person. As I share 

in my testimony, I will say a few of the words that he has been 

sharing with me until today. 

Children of the streets, like Joao used to be, are those who make 

the street his home, his playground, his living, his life, who can 

find in the street group the understanding that many times he cannot find in the family or society, one who can find in the other 

street kids best friends and a family. 

A recent study conducted by the City of Rio de Janeiro said that 

there are 700 children on the streets, living on the streets, perhaps 

as many as 1,000, and approximately 100,000 children aged 7 to 

18 living on the streets of the cities of Brazil. Children on the 

streets—that is different than of the streets, of those 7 to 8 million 

that normally we hear in the statistics given by UNICEF and some 

other organizations—are those kids who spend the whole day on 

the streets working by themselves, working with their mothers or 

brothers and sisters, helping with the family income. Sometimes 

you find a whole family, and you can see even a 4-year-old selling 

candies, polishing shoes, playing games in front of the cars to make 

any kind of money. 

A great probability of a child on the streets is to end up becoming 

a child of the streets, as the situation of Joao presents. According 

to ONU, Brazil has the tenth largest economy in the whole world, 

but also ranks eighth in the world in social inequality. This has aggravated chronic social ills; 50 percent of our economy is held in 

the hands of 5 percent of our population, and this raises a lot of 

poverty, malnutrition, kids dying, children dying of starvation and 

so many other problems that you are aware of. 

As I said, in reality, Brazil has the highest rate of child abuse 

in Latin America and the second highest in the world after Thailand. The Brazil Center for Childhood and Adolescence has recently 

estimated there are about 500,000 girls that have turned to prostitution to earn a living, some of these girls as young as 9-yearsold. 

97

I would like to share some recommendations and a few things 

that I believe that we can do. There is a need for more pressure 

on our government for the implementation of the children’s law. 

Brazil has enacted in 1990 the Statute of Children and Adolescents. It is a very good law. It has been a model for more than 10 

different countries around the world. But 15 years after the law 

has been enacted, we still need to see implementation. 

One thing that we would like to see is international organizations and governments putting pressure on our country—is really 

to implement the laws. Our Constitution states in article 227, it 

says that children and adolescents should be the priority, the absolute priority, and until today, we don’t see that children and adolescents are priority for our country, because it is not priority in 

the budget; it is not priority in any social policymaking. 

There is a need for our government to implement public-social 

policy for the family where it can guarantee they care for the children; it can guarantee quality education and a school system where 

the children can be receiving an education in all areas and they 

can spend most of the time being given a chance; for the parents 

to work and make the income. This is one of the ways we would 

avoid children going to the streets. 

Several private NGOs have tried to develop their own projects, 

what they would call social educational projects, that would come 

outside of normal public education. But those NGOs have struggled 

financially to survive and to maintain, because, unfortunately, 

there is not much investment in such programs. 

Eighty percent of the NGOs in Brazil are financed by international organizations, and we need to see more investment and 

more balancing and more investment for the issue of children. 

Families: We need to address violence. We heard a lot here about 

violence. Violence is a big issue in our country and more in my City 

of Rio de Janeiro and San Paulo and some of the main cities. Violence needs to be addressed in a different way than with violence. 

As we have seen, many children have been killed. A lot of them 

have been killed among themselves, among the drug dealers, the 

different commands that there are there. We can see children 5 

and 4 years old working for the drug business because many of 

them do not have an option for life, and several thousands of young 

people who do not have an option to maintain their own families. 

We can see that child pregnancy, early pregnancy, is a big problem because when the girls have to maintain their children, when 

a young boy has to maintain a family, he will look for an easier 

way to get it. When he is not educated, when he doesn’t have 

enough vocational training, he will look for the easiest way, which 

is working for the drug business. A minimum wage is about $100. 

In the business, you can make $200 a week or even more. So this 

problem needs to be addressed in a different way. 

Our country is debating right now on reducing the age of the 

penal age, and I don’t believe this is a solution, because we don’t 

have a rehabilitation system that would really rehabilitate those 

kids. This is one thing we need, rehabilitation centers, and this is 

a problem we face with our shelters. 

We don’t have a shelter for young people, for young teenagers, 

14, 15, 16. I have worked in some slums, and several of the boys 

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would like to leave the slums, would like to leave drugs, would like 

to leave criminal life, but there are not shelters for them. Some 

shelters are afraid to receive them because they don’t have all the 

necessary needs to address the problem of drugs, and this is something that our country needs to see in a very particular way, and 

we need more rehabilitation centers. 

Also vocational and professional training, it is something that we 

are trying to do with our network. A network is a very good strategy to reach out to a lot of street children, to reach out to a lot of 

number of kids, because when we can enforce and help the leaders 

in these small NGOs to come together as a group to build a strategy to reach out to a large number. 

Mentors: One of the things that has kept Joao out of the drug 

business, out of criminal life, is because he has me, a reference of 

something better than the kind of life he has. 

If you ask a street child what he would like to be, the majority 

of them will say they want to be the police. They will grow up and 

be a policeman, because they have a reference like the police have 

power, can kill and do anything, and they need a role model. 

If you ask a child in the slum what they want to be, they want 

to be a drug lord, because he has power, he has money, he has 

girls, he has women, and those are the two role models that our 

street children have, and we need to present them different role 

models. The church can play a big role in that, and society also 

needs to see in a different way that they also need to come together 

and be mentors. One of the Jesuit houses is putting together a program looking for people who can be mentors for those kids. 

There also is a need of articulation between the three sectors, the 

state, the NGOs and society, and the enterprise, because we also 

know that, by itself, the government cannot reach out to all the 

problems, that the government cannot do it by itself. There is a 

need to sensitize society and the enterprise. 

Right now, we have what we call corporation social responsibility. It is something I am starting to approach businesspeople to 

come together and help, always reminding that society and the 

businesspeople cannot replace the responsibility that the state has. 

Finally, it is bringing back the network subject. It is very important that we live in a global—we need to address the situation of 

unity. Isolation has been a problem. Also, we have seen projects 

wasting money. We have seen projects wasting time, and it is sad 

that houses that have been built, and nothing has been done. 

Through a network, we can minimize the cost. We can minimize 

time and resources, and we can be able to reach out to many more 

children, as we have been experiencing so far with some partnerships with Bank of Brazil raising implements, computer centers for 

more than 20 different communities, and that has helped thousands of children, and we hope to implement even more programs. 

I would like to close with a word that Joao told me 2 days before 

I came to the States as I was talking to him and telling him that 

I felt that I still had not done much for him after 9 years. He encouraged me with a phrase that I wanted to close with this afternoon. 

I told him that I felt like I did nothing for him, most of what I 

did was just to be there when he needs to talk, when he needs to 

99

share, when he needs a push. He told me, ‘‘Your nothing is a lot 

for those who have nothing.’’

So may we come together and bring our nothing together and do 

a lot for those who think they have nothing. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Santos follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MS. TERESA SANTOS, NETWORK COORDINATOR, REDE VIVA- RJ, BRAZIL

TESTIMONY: THE LIFE OF STREET CHILDREN IN BRAZIL AND INITIATIVES TO HELP THEM

Dear respected committee members: 

Good afternoon. My name is Teresa Santos. Since 2002, I have been the facilitator 

of a network of Christian organizations that work with children at risk in the city 

of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This network, Rede Viva-RJ, is affiliated with an international organization called Viva Network. For seven years prior to 2002, I worked 

among the street children and was able to open three homes for children at different 

stages of recovery. In this work, I have seen many lives transformed. For about ten 

years Jubilee Campaign has been our contact and a partner in the work we started 

among street children in Rio de Janeiro. 

I have a son by heart, Joa ̃o Ricardo, one of the boys we took off the streets about 

nine years ago. He was a challenge for me and for the whole team that used to work 

in the homes. But in another way he is a great motivation for me to press on fighting for the rights and lives of the thousands and millions children who are of the 

streets and on the street. There is a solution; there is a way out. It is possible for 

them to change. 

Joa ̃o Ricardo was twelve years old when our street team approached him in a 

group of other street kids in one of the districts of the city of Rio de Janeiro. He 

had not been on the streets long, but he was there enough to be considered a street 

child, one who makes the street his home, his playground, his living, his life; one 

who can find in the street group the understanding that many times he cannot find 

in the family or society; one who can find in the other street kids best friends and 

a family. Unfortunately, a street child can also find dissolution, hunger, a lack of 

protection, violence, abuse, fear, hopelessness, rejection, enemies and death, which 

can come as a result of the excessive use of drugs, sicknesses such as HIV/AIDS 

or drug gangs. Death also comes for street kids when they are murdered by those 

who believe it is better to eliminate a street child today than to face a criminal tomorrow. 

This brings to mind the horrifying murder of eight street kids by police officers 

one night in July 1993 as they were sleeping in front of a church in the center of 

the city of Rio. Driving today in the place makes me think that although there have 

been many proposals and programs for addressing the problems of Brazilian street 

kids, not much has been achieved. There are still a large number of kids on the 

streets, and murder takes place with impunity. I am glad Joa ̃o did not hang around 

that area and was able to face a different future. 

Joa ̃o was the oldest of four, though his sister and two younger bothers had a different father who was already dead. The family lived in a small home in a big slum 

area on the periphery of Rio de Janeiro. His mother struggled to survive and to 

raise the kids. At the age of eight, Joa ̃o, being the oldest, used to accompany his 

mother as she worked on the streets selling things for the provision of her family. 

He had to work to help her, and began spending most of his time on the streets. 

A similar situation is faced today by millions of children all over Brazil, who work 

and live on the streets. 

Joa ̃o’s family was part of the 35% of the population in which families live on incomes of $60 or less per month. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics 

(IBGE) affirms that poverty in Brazil is concentrated in the children, with more 

than 27.4 million poor children. Consequently, thousands of children have to work 

to survive, losing their childhood, losing interesting in education and becoming 

street children like Joa ̃o. Little by little he learned about life on the streets, was 

deceived by a false sense of freedom and one day, being afraid of his mother’s violence, decided to run away and make the street his new home. 

A recent study conducted by the city of Rio de Janeiro said there are 700 children 

on the streets—perhaps as many as one thousand—and approximately 100,000 children aged 7 to 18 living on the streets of all the main cities of Brazil. But some 

NGOs suggest that there are many more than two thousand in Rio. The point is 

that the profile of the street child has changed. From his experience throughout alVerDate Mar 21 2002 12:53 Jan 18, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00103 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 F:\WORK\AGI\091305\23435.000 HINTREL1 PsN: SHIRL
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most twenty years working with street children, Robert Schmidt has seen changes 

in the characteristics of the street children. As the leader of Refuge for Street Children Association (REMER), an organization with its headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, 

Schmidt says there has been growth in the number of kids who leave home and, 

instead of living on the streets, invade empty and abandoned buildings around the 

city or in the slum areas, living in groups without any infrastructure and without 

the means to provide for their basic needs. 

Because of the difficulties of street life, children build protective barriers inside 

themselves. One of the greatest challenges for anyone trying to reach out to those 

kids is the challenge of taking not only the child out of the street but the street 

out of the child. After a time of friendship building and trust gain, Joa ̃o came to 

the transitory home with five of his street friends. But the whole group came with 

no limits, with no sense of respect, with a false concept of freedom, with their hearts 

full of anger, hate and fear, and with the street inside themselves. Joa ̃o was what 

some people would call a ‘‘hard case,’’ a ‘‘lost cause.’’ Three times he led the other 

boys in rebelling and motivated them to go back to the streets. But they would always return. The third time was a turning point in Joa ̃o’s life. Somehow I could see 

that he was telling the truth when he asked for another chance, that he needed help 

and would really change. I knew it would not be easy for him, but he had to be 

given a chance and my team workers and I would have to be prepared to help him 

overcome those difficulties and be an example of social inclusion, not exclusion. 

Sometimes society has difficulty seeing that a street child is just like any other 

child: a human being in his stage of development, an individual just like any other 

citizen, with feelings, dreams and needs, and that the streets cannot provide the 

means to face reality. Instead, they are seen as delinquents—criminals that need 

to be punished. This attitude simply legitimates a process of exclusion. 

Joa ̃o’s transformation was a process that required a holistic, multi-stage program, 

involving a lot of understanding, love and care. The holistic approach is very important, for it is not only the physical and emotional aspects that need to be restored 

and fulfilled. For the transformation of Joa ̃o’s life, the spiritual relationship had also 

to be restored. Religious teaching was very important, for it was at this point that 

he and many other children had the chance to understand what it means to love 

and to be loved, what it means to forgive and to be forgiven. It gave him new hope 

to continue in life, to be motivated to return to school and to become a different person—a citizen respected by society in spite of his past. I had the privilege to be one 

of the educators who helped Joa ̃o in this process. I remember when, after we had 

found his family—his mother, brothers, sister and some relatives—when his mother 

met him after a long time and could hear him give her advice about life, she was 

shocked and asked me what we had done with him, for he was a completely new 

kid. He used to be violent and disrespectful of authority and had no interest in 

studying or in religious things whatsoever—a boy full of anger and hate. His mother’s words made me reflect on the need for a holistic way of working, for his new 

concept of God—the concept that he was loved and forgiven—was the starting point 

for his life changing. 

After a process of working with his family that involved helping his mother rebuild their home, making possible Joa ̃o’s return to some minimum conditions of living, and restoring family relations, Joa ̃o was ready to return home. But one day, 

the sad news came that his mother had been killed by HIV/AIDS. She left a letter 

asking that the two other boys be taken to the institution and the little girl be given 

to some neighbor. What to do at this point? Would the institutionalization of these 

two little boys be the solution for their lives? After some research and much talking, 

it was agreed that they would be cared for by an aunt who was the closest relative, 

but the institution had to commit itself with some financial and food help, for she 

had five other kids to look after and was not able to work. She was willing to receive 

Joa ̃o as well, but her house did not have space for everyone. Several actions were 

taken to help the family structure receive Joa ̃o. 

When Joa ̃o was finally able to be reintegrated to his relative’s family, he was back 

in school, taking English and computer classes, and had been prepared to face life 

back in the slum. In order to make Joa ̃o’s reintegration possible, the institution had 

to help his relatives to start a project of building a new home, for the other one 

was too small and half of it had come down after a strong rainstorm. After a few 

years, one of his brothers died of AIDS at the age of nine. Once more, Joa ̃o had to 

face another great loss in his life, but the interesting thing is the resilience he had 

created to overcome the difficulties of life and to press on to seek a better and more 

respectable future. There he was, an orphan living with his brothers’ relatives, without a reference in life, but with a great desire to be a successful person. I saw that 

to help Joa ̃o to persevere in his heart desire and not to return to the streets or, 

even worse, to get involved in the drug gangs, he needed a strong reference. By the 

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time he returned to his family, I was no longer working in the institution, but I 

have developed a very good relationship with him and often contact him to check 

on him and motivate him to press on. I became his mentor, his reference—almost 

like his mother—someone he would always look for when he needed advice or needed to share his heart, his desires and his problems. Sometimes it was hard even 

for me to believe he was the same tough boy who had come to the children’s home, 

who would not listen to or obey anyone. Joa ̃o is 21 years old today and he still finds 

in me his point of reference, which I perceive as a great responsibility. 

One of Joa ̃o’s biggest desires was to serve in the army, but because he was a boy 

from the slums he was not accepted. He was very frustrated and desolate, but he 

did not despair or lose hope. Inside himself there is a young human being with 

dreams and a strong desire to be a winner. Unable to find a job, to find a way to 

help supply the needs of his brothers and sister or to help his aunt raise them, he 

felt tempted to accept the easy and short way to life. He told me that several times 

he has received invitations to work for the drug business, which pays a child in a 

week more than a hard worker can make in a whole month. But he always overcomes those difficult times and says no to the offers, for inside him there are still 

good principles he learned during his time in the institution. He has the fear of God 

and a strong desire and assurance that he will make his way by honest means, in 

spite of all rejection and exclusion by a prejudiced society that cannot see a black 

boy who use to be a street child and who lives in the slums as anything but a 

threat. 

Once, not long ago, I was very concerned for Joa ̃o and his whole family. His aunt 

had separated and had to take care of his second brother, who was becoming very 

sick and would spend hours and days being attended by our failed hospital system. 

She still had to provide for her other five children, only one of whom was working. 

There were times that they did not have anything to eat or had only one meal a 

day. The family was registered in a local government program that gave a check 

to help to supply the family’s needs, but it was not enough. Several other people 

had to get mobilized to help them. Joa ̃o could not find a job, almost became depressed because he felt rejected and useless, having to face his second brother’s illness, his aunt in despair and the whole family expecting him to get a job and help 

to support them. I had to intervene and find something for him to do, for by that 

time he was about to come to the conclusion that there was no other way aside from 

working for the drug business, which was still inviting and encouraging him to join 

the group. It was a hard time. The government program helped some, but did not 

solve either the physical or the emotional problems the whole family faced. Finally, 

through the network that has as its one object the exchange of information, we were 

able to get his aunt a job. Not long after, we also found Joa ̃o a job, and his cousin 

found a job as well. Joa ̃o did not make much money, but he told me that was not 

the most important thing. The point was that he felt dignity and that he was a respectable citizen because he could say he had a job. Assistance programs will help 

in a survival situation, but will never replace the need for concrete actions to help 

people have their rights as human beings and citizens. I was very happy to hear 

the other day that the family gave back the assistance that they were receiving from 

the government, for now they were happy and proud to be able to provide for their 

own needs. 

According to ONU, Brazil has the tenth-largest economy in the world, but also 

ranks eighth in the world in social inequality; this has aggravated chronic social ills. 

As a sad illustration of further social decay, the Brazilian Center for Childhood and 

Adolescence (CBIA) recently estimated that about 500,000 girls have turned to prostitution to earn a living. Some of these girls are as young as nine years old. According to the Jornal do Brasil newspaper, the Government of the State of Para ́ estimated that there were 30,000 child prostitutes between the ages of 11 and 15 in 

that state alone. Since the 1960s, Brazil has seen a massive exodus from the rural 

areas to the big urban centers. A large number of these migrants come to the cities 

looking for a better life, a job and a place to live. Many of them end up not finding 

jobs and have to face the reality of life in the crowded slums when not on the 

streets. As the number of slum dwellers grows, so do the numbers of street children. 

With the growth of the tourism industry, poor girls have found that selling their 

bodies has become a way for them to have access to the dollars of tourists. In the 

Northeast, moreover, thousands of children who resist malnourishment have to live 

with some mental disorders. 

In 1990, as the result of intensive work by a number of Brazilians on behalf of 

the rights of children, the Statute of Children and Adolescents—the ‘‘ECA’’ (Law 

8069/90)—was enacted. It regularized the 1988 revision of the Brazilian Constitution, which in Article 227 states: ‘‘It is the duty of the family, society and the state 

to assure with absolute priority the rights of children and adolescents to life, health, 

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food, education, leisure, occupational training, culture, dignity, respect, freedom, and 

family and community life, and in addition to protect them from all forms of negligence, discrimination, exploitation, violence, cruelty and oppression.’’

Up to this point children had been considered the object of state intervention, but 

from now on children and adolescents have the right to be seen and considered the 

subject of elementary needs of human beings, with the right to receive universal assistance. They are seen as citizens with the right to be respected and protected. The 

ECA also brought about the decentralization of public polices so that now the most 

important actor is the locality. The responsibility established in the new legislation 

to organize, create and put in practice local public policies that will guarantee the 

rights of children is now the responsibility of the nearly 5,000 municipalities around 

the country. With the creation mandated by ECA, each municipality has the challenge to form Children’s Rights Councils (Conselhos de Direitos) and Guardianship 

Councils (Conselhos Tutelares), whose members are from both the government and 

nongovernmental organizations. 

The creation of effective councils throughout Brazil has become one of the foremost priorities for organizations concerned with the rights of children. The implementation of the Child Statute is thus not only a reform of child welfare laws, but 

also a significant test of—and precedent in—the democratization of Brazilian society. 

There is no doubt that the ECA is an efficient legislation. It has served as a model 

for more than ten different countries, but 15 years after the law was put in place, 

most of it is still merely words on paper; it needs to be put into practice. UNICEF 

says that the Brazilian statute is one of the most advanced in the world. But it will 

become reality only when remaining disparities are overcome and each of the 61 

million boys and girls in the country has an equal opportunity. 

Drawing attention to the fact that the ECA says children and adolescents are the 

absolute priority of the family, society and state, I would like to present some important points that I believe we all need to reflect on as we seek solutions better to 

protect and help the millions of street children in Brazil: 

1. THE RIGHTS OF STREET CHILDREN NEED TO BE APPLIED BY THE FAMILY, THE SOCIETY AND THE STATE AS AN ‘‘ABSOLUTE PRIORITY,’’ AS STATED IN THE CONSTITUTION. 

A priority for the state 

All the rights a street child needs are written in the Children’s Statute, but the 

problem is that we need to see more interest from the parties involved to make the 

statute effective. From the state side, there needs to be a real interest in making 

this an important issue; they need to raise the subject as much as they can, formulating and putting in practice public social policies that will help the street child. 

Children should be a priority in the government’s budget. The lack of money creates a problem for the quality and sustainability of the few shelters that exist, and 

a problem for the reintegration of the kids back into their families. 

The state should seek for means to guarantee that all 5,000 cities will have a 

Children’s Rights Council and a Guardian Council. Thousands of children are suffering maltreatment, are on the streets and are unprotected because there is no interest on the part of local governors to establish the Children’s Councils. A friend 

of mine who started a ministry in a city called Sa ̃o Jose ́ de Caiana, in the interior 

of the State of Paraı ́ba, was shocked at the way children had been abused and maltreated when she arrived there seven years ago. One day she decided to denounce 

the maltreatment of a little girl who was about to die. She had to go miles away 

looking for one Guardian Council who could help in the case. The help the Council 

gave was not effective for several reasons, the distance being one of them. But the 

most amazing and shocking point was the reaction of the local population, who 

strongly discriminated against her and hired someone to kill her, which, by a miracle, did not happen. Unfortunately, by that time she had decided she would never 

do it again. Very recently she decided to adopt a child who was also suffering from 

malnutrition and maltreatment. And last week she asked me for help to establish 

a Children’s Council in her city. 

A priority for society 

Society is very badly informed about the rights of children. In the case mentioned 

above, almost the whole town was against the idea that a local family would be denounced because a child had been maltreated, something they consider ‘‘normal.’’ 

There are so many situations like this and nothing much is done about them, because maltreatment of children has become acceptable in the society. If there is no 

interest from the governmental side about the creation of a Children’s Council, the 

organized society could push for it; the problem is that in many towns and cities 

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the society is neither organized nor educated, as in the case above. There is a need 

for a strong campaign to make the children’s law understandable, acceptable and 

applicable by the whole society. I believe it would help to decrease the number of 

cases of children who run away from home because of maltreatment and domestic 

violence, which is the case for many street children. 

But we do not need to go to places where the population is less educated to see 

the lack of understanding of the children’s law. In the mega-cities such as Rio or 

Sa ̃o Paulo, where the population lives under the constant fear of violence, people 

do not understand that the way to reduce violence is not by reducing the penal age 

or desiring the return of the use of violence and brutal penalties against young lives. 

People need to understand that the new law does not aim to protect criminals or 

give them immunity, but aims to guarantee basic rights that will reduce violence 

in the society 

I remember a boy in the streets telling me that it did not matter to him if he 

did bad things—if he robbed or killed—for he did not had much to gain out of life 

except death. What does one do in cases like this? 

A priority for the family 

Families also need to contribute to the well being of children. Most street children 

have a family, and the law states the need for every child to be reintegrated into 

his family and that all the shelters are temporary. I agree with this, but I do not 

understand how it can happen when little is done to reverse the disintegration of 

families. 

When I asked the NGOs associated with our network that have shelters for street 

and abandoned children what their recommendation would be, they were unanimous 

in saying they would like to see a public social policy put in place for the family. 

We cannot require some care from a family when the family itself needs to be taken 

care of. We cannot reintegrate a child when his family is struggling to survive, when 

there is not enough money to help the family to provide for their basic needs. 

There are thousand of single-parent families in which the mother is the head of 

the household and has to provide the family’s income, as in the case of Joa ̃o’s family. 

If a social policy for the family would guarantee day care for small kids, if it would 

guarantee an education system in which Joa ̃o could have received a quality education, spending not only half a day but a full day in school, with sports activities, 

cultural activities and other important things for his life development, he would not 

have needed to go to work on the streets and probably would never have become 

a street child. His brother who died would have been more likely to receive health 

care and could be alive today. In reality, though, several daycare centers have been 

closed because of delays in receiving the money the government had the obligation 

to provide. Some institutions have gone more than six months without receiving the 

designated funds and have been forced to close. Pressure needs to be applied to decrease corruption and to place more investment in quality education. 

2. STREET CHILDREN NEED TO BE EDUCATED. 

The quality of education is another very important issue. Violence is a reality all 

over the country and much more so in the urban centers and slum areas. But the 

solution is neither repression nor a larger number of police; it is a holistic socialeducation system that will teach new values, that will change the focus of children’s 

concept of life, that will raise hopes for a better and equal future for poor youth 

who find in the drug business their means to dress like the others, to buy brandname clothes, shoes and the material things they think are important. I believe 

drug addiction can be fought with a good education and new opportunities for income. 

In his article, ‘‘Why so many executions in Sa ̃o Paulo’s periphery?’’ Bruno Paes 

Manso, a journalist and researcher at the Fernand Braudel Institute of World Economics, wrote:

The range of actions needed to contain violence demands a level of political 

will never before seen in dealing with Sa ̃o Paulo’s huge problems. One key area 

is education. Police statistics indicate that both homicide victims and killers 

have little or no formal schooling. According to police numbers, only 2% of homicide victims ever reached high school. The remaining 98% is composed of young 

people who dropped out of school before the 8th grade, many of whom are illiterate. Of the killers, only 10% reached high school. Violence in the urban peripheries suggests that the other 5% makes a big difference. Parents complain 

that half-day class schedules (in Brazil children attend school in either the 

morning or the afternoon) provide too little learning and too much idleness. Unsupervised children often get mixed up in criminal activities in the street, enVerDate Mar 21 2002 12:53 Jan 18, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00107 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 F:\WORK\AGI\091305\23435.000 HINTREL1 PsN: SHIRL
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couraged by what parents call the ‘‘wrong crowd.’’ Child labor, criticized by the 

U.S. government, is often viewed with pride in Brazil’s urban peripheries. Going 

to school in the morning and working in the afternoon is one of the surest ways 

for a teenager to live a long life away from crime. Special programs could be 

developed by both the public and private sections to lengthen the school day 

from, say, four to six hours and to subsidize part-time jobs for adolescents. Government projects involving the moral authority of mothers in these communities 

could be a viable way of encouraging children to live decent lives. Mothers are 

the care providers that most willingly invest their time in bettering the community. But they cannot do it alone. 

3. STREET CHILDREN NEED HELP TO GET OFF DRUGS. 

A major problem faced by street children and children living in the slums is the 

use of drugs. Some of the kids’ drug use is limited to sniffing glue, which helps them 

overcome the difficulties of life on the streets. As they grow, however, they start 

using heavier drugs and get involved with the drug business. There is therefore a 

high number of deaths related to drug use. From 5% to 77.3% of street children in 

the city of Sa ̃o Paulo between the ages of nine and 14 use heavy drugs. The Brazilian Center of Psychotropic Drugs Information (CEBRID) said in 2001 that in 

Fortaleza, 33.2% of street children use not so heavy drugs, but 55.7% use heavy 

ones. In Rio de Janeiro, 82.4% between the ages of twelve and 18 make use of very 

heavy drugs. The number of deaths related to drugs and the drug traffic in Rio de 

Janeiro is comparable to the number of deaths in a civil war. 

In this area there is a need for a social policy to help those kids involved with 

drugs. The numbers are alarming, and the existing shelters complain of the lack of 

specific rehabilitation centers for youth involved with drugs. Most of the rehabilitation centers I know of in the city of Rio are for adults. Normally, the kids with drug 

addiction are sent to the shelters that serve abandoned children who suffer from 

other kinds of maltreatment, where they do not have the specific staff and resources 

to offer quality assistance. Very often our office receives calls from parents, friends 

and relatives looking for a place for a youth who wishes to get free of drugs, or who 

needs to be removed to another place because he has been threatened by the drug 

business and is in risk of being murdered. But there are no places for these kids. 

I know that the cost of providing more facilities is very high, but if we want to reduce violence—if adolescents are a priority—the youth need to be a priority in the 

government’s budget. 

4. STREET CHILDREN NEED PROTECTION AGAINST SEXUAL VIOLENCE. 

There is an urgent need for a social policy to protect children from sexual abuse. 

According to Dimenstein (1996), Brazil has the highest rate of child abuse in Latin 

America and the second highest in the world, second only to Thailand. The same 

author noted that 80% of the children and adolescents involved in sex exploitation 

today were victims of incest. The numbers are alarming and something more needs 

to be done. It is true that the government has given special attention to the issue, 

but with one of the best laws for child protection, it is unacceptable that our country 

ranks second in the world for child abuse. It proves that there is an urgent need 

to put into practice the protection polices that now exist only on paper. Our country 

has advanced in the confronting of the issue of sexual exploitation, but there is 

much still to be done. 

We need to conduct research on the situation in the whole country that will allow 

the actors to set up goals and indicators. There is also a need for defense centers 

specifically to deal with children who have suffered abuse. Raising awareness that 

the abuse needs to be denounced is a long process and a big challenge, but it needs 

to be addressed, along with ways to protect both the victim and the denouncer. Another specific area needs more investment, as well as more articulation among the 

governmental and nongovernmental spheres at both the national and international 

levels: to seek solutions to the problem of sexual tourism and child trafficking. 

5. STREET CHILDREN NEED TO GET OUT OF CHILD LABOR. 

A study on child labor in Brazil by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) found that there are 1.5 million working children and adolescents in 

the 5–13 age bracket, another 1.5 million in the 14–15 group, and 2.4 million adolescents between 16 and 17 irregularly inserted in the labor market. 

Brazil was one of the first countries to establish a program to combat child labor, 

and it has been recognized as a model for Latin America. The Program for the 

Eradication of Child Labor (PETI) currently benefits 810,000 children in 2,606 Brazilian municipalities. PETI aims to eliminate all forms of child labor. The program 

105

pays a grant to families with children between seven and 15 who are involved in 

any type of work. The family, on the other hand, needs to guarantee that children 

will be removed from work and enrolled in school. 

I agree that this is a very program, but it has its deficiencies. The main one, in 

my opinion (and on this some other organizations agree), is that the government 

needs to develop a parallel program for the family. The results have proved that 

if the family has no way to provide for its basic needs and no way to raise its income, the child will still be forced to work to provide for the family. The parents 

need professionalization, education and orientation to run their own businesses or 

even participate in a group enterprise so they can provide for the basic needs of the 

family. 

I believe that poverty is not the only problem for child labor. The lack of a good 

educational system and good public social policies that guarantee children’s rights 

creates a gap that allows opportunists looking for a source of cheap labor to take 

advantage of kids’ need to work. A great part of our society still tolerates child 

labor, for they believe that it is better for a child to work than to steal or do nothing. Many people in our society still associate a youth’s not working with leisure, 

marginality or even delinquency. There needs to be a strong concretization of what 

the law says about child labor. 

Last week I was talking with a nine-year-old girl who has worked since she was 

seven to help with her family’s income. I was telling her she should be in school 

or at home, and a woman came up to us and told me the little girl was right, for 

she was helping her mom and her little brothers. She bought some candy the girl 

was selling and left very proud that she had done the best for the child. 

6. STREET YOUTH NEED JOBS. 

There is a need for more job opportunities for youth. They need to be motivated 

to study with the perspective that by doing so they will be able to find an honest 

job that will permit them to provide for their needs. A good opportunity for a youth 

to find a job is through the application of a new law regarding jobs for young people 

(Law 10.097/2000). The government has an important part to play by helping raise 

awareness about and fulfilling this law. 

A 2005 report by Marina Rosenfeld and Andressa Munik said that on May 2 of 

this year, the Abrinq Foundation, a Brazilian association of toy producers, launched 

a public campaign in Sa ̃o Paulo called ‘‘Apprentice Law: your company teaches and 

everyone learns.’’ This was a combined initiative for the rights of children and adolescents between the Abrinq Foundation and the Ethos Institute, an institute of 

business and corporate social responsibility. The campaign aimed to catch the attention of society for the insertion of adolescents from age 14 to 18 in the labor market, 

based on the federal law for apprenticeship of teenagers (Law 10.097/2000). 

There is a need for the application of the law and incentives for the companies 

to hire. But one also needs to be conscious that the government will not be able to 

solve the problem by itself. There is a need of articulation by NGOs and enterprises 

to meet this great challenge. 

7. STREET CHILDREN NEED A GOOD ROLE MODEL OR MENTOR. 

The ECA prescribes the following measures in cases of youth crime: a warning, 

mandatory reparation of damages, community service, assisted liberty (parole), 

semi-liberty or incarceration in an educational institution. A report of the international NGO Human Rights Watch, with its headquarters in the USA, presented 

the results of research conducted in the Brazilian institutions for delinquent kids. 

According to the document, there are too many children for the available space, 

leading to overcrowded conditions, as well as several cases of guards’ committing 

acts of verbal abuse and physical violence against the inmates. It also mentions the 

abuse of authority by the educators or agents. It proves the inefficiency of the system. The kids come out worse than when they arrived. Like Joa ̃o, these kids need 

role models who are different from the police who are able to kill with impunity. 

It is interesting to ask a street child what they would like to be; a high number 

of them say they would like to be police officers. Those kids need good references 

in life other than the gang leader who has power, money and women, but a short 

life. They need somehow to have their self-esteem raised, but we need to find other 

ways to help them with this. 

These kids are good kids, normal kids who from a young age have had a tough 

life and need to be affirmed and accepted. Program need to be developed that will 

reinforce the self-esteem of these youth in different ways. As in the case of Joa ̃o, 

it is very important that these programs have a holistic point of view, where not 

only the child’s physical and emotional problems, but also the spiritual ones, are adVerDate Mar 21 2002 12:53 Jan 18, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00109 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 F:\WORK\AGI\091305\23435.000 HINTREL1 PsN: SHIRL
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dressed. Where the child will learn that he or she has an important place in life, 

as a special person made by God. 

I would like to mention an excellent project developed by a group of students from 

a university in Rio de Janeiro to help kids in trouble with the law. The project is 

called ‘‘Assisted Liberty Guide or Mentor.’’ The students realized that what the kids 

need is a good reference: someone who can talk to them, who can be a mentor and 

teach them new values and perspective for life. This project for delinquent youth 

has been implemented by the Second Office of Juveniles and Infants of the municipality of Rio de Janeiro. They are looking for people in society who will donate part 

of their time to help those kids by being mentors. The child’s sentence would be to 

be counseled by a mentor for a certain period each week. They have asked the Network to help them by presenting the challenge to church leaders, for they also believe in the holistic way of helping those kids. 

8. STREET CHILDREN NEED WELL-PREPARED WORKERS AND EDUCATORS. 

A great challenge for those who work with street children is to find well-prepared 

educators who both love the children and have the knowledge to deal with the main 

issues street children face. Because of the cost, most of the shelters and children’s 

homes hire educators with less education who are able to work for lower salaries. 

This solves the problem of their sustainability, but raises the problem of lower quality and less meaningful work with the children. It is more than proved that an investment in staff training is an important element for the development of the work 

and the child attended by the workers. 

There is also a need for more investment in hiring interdisciplinary staff, which 

is required by the law and made necessary by the problems the organizations face 

day after day. The shelters, both governmental and private, need more investment 

for this expensive but needed resource. 

The network has sought solutions that can minimize the cost of training and provide needed staff through partnership with other organizations who believe in the 

need for qualified staff for the success of the services offered. 

9. STREET CHILDREN NEED FOR A NEW STRATEGY TO BE REACHED. 

My experience of running three homes for street children—seeing lives transformed, seeing others lost, being a strong reference to some of the kids to this day, 

particularly in the case of Joa ̃o, seeing the long way our nation and society still have 

to go to help and protect children and adolescents instead of severely punishing 

them—drove me to a new task of pursuing laws to guarantee the rights of children 

and adolescents in our country. I was challenged by the vision of a network as a 

way to be a voice and a forum for children, a way of integration of efforts, resources 

and experiences, and a way to achieve better results as a group than as an isolated 

individual. After a long time of research and information collection, I challenged a 

group of organizations to join forces and work together. In 2002 the Network was 

named Rede Viva-RJ and today more than 35 organizations are associated. They develop projects together, exchange experiences, learn together, support each other in 

hard situations, for they understand each other’s efforts better than any other 

group, and work toward becoming a strong voice in the defense of the rights of our 

children and adolescents. 

Making use of a network is a new strategy and a great way to achieve better and 

higher results. After a long time and intense research, some of the weaknesses and 

strengths of each organization were registered, making possible the creation of network projects in which the group together develops the criteria and pushes to accomplish them, with the facilitation of the coordination and administrative office. 

The network today has the project to empower the institution, offering qualification 

to the leaders, the educators and the administrative team, and seeking to promote 

better and higher quality services offered to the children. 

Another project the group developed in partnership with the Bank of Brazil and 

the Zero Hunger Program of the federal government was the implementation of 21 

computer centers. Our organizations offered the space and personnel and the Bank 

donated used computers. The results have benefited thousands of children from the 

slums, who did not have access to the Internet and the computer world. An extension project has been put together, in which about twelve of these institutions are 

seeking to provide professional training in different areas of computer use, to help 

thousands of youths who have not had much opportunity in life to be qualified and 

competitive in the market. It will help many of them to get off drugs, to have some 

source of income and to help with their family income. 

‘‘With the collaboration of Rede Viva-RJ, many things become possible. We have 

a house for girls, and with the courses provided we can help our girls much better. 

107

We also have a day care center here in the community, and we have been able to 

develop a better quality work through the experiences the network has offered. 

Through this unity we have been able to help many young people have a better option 

for life than the life in the drug business.’’ (Alexandre—Coordinator of the computer 

center of Youth With a Mission in the community of Borel, Rio de Janeiro) 

‘‘I live in a street without a name, in a home without a number, but through the 

computer center I can talk with the whole world.’’ (Paulo, 11, from INPAR (Presbyterian Institute A ́ lvaro Reis) 

Another important project that is in the research stage is the girls’ project. It is 

a participative project in which a group of girls has been able to participate in constructing of the strategy that aims to help the girls meet their main needs and 

rights. They will be educated in different aspects of life; we hope to be able to reduce 

early pregnancies and sexual diseases, to train girls for professional life and to get 

them into the labor market. The main difference of this project is that is has been 

done in a network where different NGOs leaders can discuss together and construct 

together with the girls as the protagonist, for they know exactly how they would 

like us to help. 

The network also provides a space for a forum on the children’s rights issue and 

seeks to communicate with government authorities and enterprises, believing that 

the problem of street children—and any other problem of children at risk—has to 

be faced by society in general. Each one needs to find his part in this great task, 

joining hands and reaching out to our children. 

The network is also a space for sharing problems, a place where people can find 

others who face the same kind of problem, a place where one helps the other. For 

example, we have a situation now in which one of the projects would have to stop 

its activities for lack of money to pay the rent. The members of the network went 

to visit the project leader and gave encouragement and money to keep it going, because they shared the idea that the children to be reached and helped are not only 

those from our own institutions, but that each one has a special passion and wants 

to protect all the children at risk they can. 

‘‘Joeli Barbosa da Silva, born September 11, 1992, came to Adonai Home February 

14, 2002, and has been with us up to the present. Like many other girls, Joeli ran 

away from home because of family maltreatments. She is in the third grade and has 

been having a good school achievement. She is a very sensitive child who relates very 

well with those around her. For us in the Adonai Home, the Rede Viva-RJ has been 

a strategy from God that has helped us in the education and qualification to better 

care for our children at risk.’’ (Joa ̃o Figueiredo da Silva—President of Adonai Home, 

a facility situated in the city of Sa ̃o Ginc ̧alo in Rio de Janeiro.) When the Adonai 

Home came to the Network, it was about to close, but with the mobilization of the 

others in the group, little by little they have moved to a point at which they are 

able to meet all the necessary demands to maintain the house for the kids. 

I would like to finish my speech with something Joa ̃o said to me three days ago. 

When I told him I was going to share his life testimony at this event, he told me 

how important I was to him. I said I felt that what I have done for him was so 

little and was about nothing, and he told me, ‘‘Your nothing is much for those who 

have nothing.’’ Let us bring together our nothing and do much for those who think 

they have nothing. Let us help them to raise the great person, the human being 

they are. 

10. STREET CHILDREN NEED YOU AND ME, FOR TOGETHER WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. 

Thank you for this opportunity.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you so very much for your testimony. 

I ask Mr. Sexton if he would proceed. 

STATEMENT OF MR. ANDY SEXTON, INTERNATIONAL 

COORDINATOR, CHILDREN AT RISK, OAS!S INTERNATIONAL 

Mr. SEXTON. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee, I am 

honored to be here today. I would like to thank you very much for 

holding this hearing on street children. I would tell you, Mr. Chairman, that the issue needs a shot of adrenaline. I think it has largely dropped off the radar of the media, donors and governments, so 

I think this hearing is both timely and important. 

I am the International Director for Children at Risk for an NGO 

called OAS!S. We have projects working with street children in 

108

Zimbabwe, in India, and the prevention of street girls project in 

Uganda. You have a full copy of my testimony, but I would like to 

just summarize it because I know the time we have. 

My testimony focuses on two issues, the situation of street children in eastern-southern Africa, with particular reference to 

Zimbabwe and Uganda, and then specific challenges related to current work with street children globally and possible strategic responses. 

Africa is young. It is urban, and it is poor. Half of the continent’s 

population is under 15; 37 percent of the population lives in towns 

and cities; 34 of the world’s highly-indebted poor countries are in 

Africa. The related challenges that these statistics bring are compounded by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which has already killed 

some 14 million people globally. We know, as we heard, that there 

are going to be 18 to 20 million orphans due to HIV in Africa by 

2010. 

So one of the results of the situation facing Africa is an increasing number of street children. Now we are seeing second- and 

third-generation street children in some African towns and cities. 

It is worth noting that street children are a relatively new phenomena in Africa compared to other places in the world. It only 

really became an issue in the 1980s. 

There are estimated to be 10,000 street children in Uganda. In 

May 2002, however, the Ugandan Government instituted a plan to 

remove the children from the streets of the capital city, Kampala. 

Once rounded up, they were to be rehabilitated from a center called 

the Kamparingisa National Rehabilitation Center. 

In the first forcible removal, 145 children were taken, including 

four teenage mothers. Since then, these roundups have continued 

approximately every 4 months. While the total of children that 

have been taken to this place is not available, a figure of 200 have 

been resettled by one lead NGO, given that responsibility by the 

government, called Give Me a Chance. 

In May 2005, we commissioned some research into the validity 

and impact of this approach to dealing with street children. The research was conducted by interviews with all the key stakeholders. 

The findings were scary, really. Although the street children appreciated the food and the schooling and the public applauded a decrease in the number of children on the streets, the facility itself 

is totally under-resourced, with only 50 percent of the staff that 

they need, no medical supplies, no running water, no electricity 

and totally non-functioning toilet facilities. In addition, there are 

allegations of physical and sexual abuse by the staff. The children 

are held together with juvenile offenders and adults. 

We also found that the government policies actually created a 

community of children who live underground, hiding from the 

roundups. Needless to say, these children are ripe for criminal exploitation now. The street children themselves felt that the policy 

is about hiding them away rather than actually helping them. 

This government approach has nothing to do with the causes of 

the problem, so there are always more children coming to fill the 

vacuum left by the ones that they remove. 

The situation in Zimbabwe is even more extreme. On the 19th 

of May, 2005, with little or no warning, the government embarked 

109

on a cleanup campaign, a crash operation known as Operation 

Murambatsvina, or Operation Clear Out the Rubbish. It started in 

the Zimbabwe capital, Harare, and rapidly evolved into a nationwide demolition and eviction campaign of homes, of businesses and 

vending sites carried out by the army and the police. Some 700,000 

people have been affected. They have lost their homes and their 

sources of livelihood. 

For us as an organization, four of our staff are now homeless. 

Four of our preschools have been destroyed, and all the street girls 

that we have been working with have been rounded up and detained, most of them we don’t know where they are. 

One of these girls—I will just refer to as ‘‘G’’ for obvious security 

reasons—when the staff met her on the streets a few weeks ago, 

she spoke at length of her experiences of Operation 

Murambatsvina. She reported:

‘‘During the first roundup, the police took us to the bush where 

they beat us and left us. We walked 15 kilometers to get to the 

main road, and we continued walking until we got a ride to 

Harare. When we got to town, our legs were swollen. We were 

rounded up again. I was taken to Caledonia farm. I ran away 

2 days later.’’

Operation Murambatsvina has changed the whole operating environment in Zimbabwe. In my visit in June 2005, I saw a total state 

of confusion. Another approach is needed, one that is in line with 

international legislation, that protects the rights of the child. 

In February 2005, a steering committee was formed to look at 

the possibility of developing a global strategy with street children. 

The Global Strategy with Street Children Team consists of representatives from organizations working directly with street children. 

The first task that we did was to survey 20 other key people in 

the field to ascertain their experiences around certain issues, and 

as a result of that feedback and ensuing discussions, a global strategy with street children is emerging. A meeting of 17 experts in the 

field representing 12 NGOs will be held between September 29 and 

October 1 of this year. 

The strategy being proposed is simple in design. It proposes to 

develop hubs in 14 regions of the world. These hubs will strengthen, support and connect existing street children’s projects. They 

will motivate and train new projects and workers. They will research and advocate. They will facilitate strategic citywide and 

countrywide responses and encourage innovative initiatives. This is 

what we can do. 

These teams will be supported by small resourcing teams. It is 

hoped that, by establishing these teams, work among street children will be improved and expanded, the aim being to reach all of 

the street children of the world. 

In conclusion, current international legislation makes it abundantly clear that the rights of street children are to be protected 

as enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and 

the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. What 

is important is how this translates into protecting and assisting 

110

street children in countries like Uganda and Zimbabwe and, as we 

have heard, in Brazil and the Philippines, and for children like G. 

Responses should ensure that the children’s best interests are essential. In addition, they should include appropriate input from the 

children themselves. They should also work with the children, the 

families and the community in a multi-level approach, and they 

should be strategic, involving cooperation of key stakeholders. They 

are not strategic currently. A lot of people are doing a lot of things, 

but it is not coordinated. 

In light of the above, we would like to make the following recommendations to the Congress and the wider international community: In order to better address the issues related to street children, 

more research and reporting is needed. Since the State Department’s annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices covers 

human rights of children, that report should be expanded, I believe, 

to include information on street children, issues facing them in 

each country, the numbers of street children per country and government’s responses to resolving issues related to street children. 

A second recommendation is that the U.S. Government, through 

USAID and other appropriate agencies, fund research that leads to 

comprehensive and strategic initiatives that foster cooperation between NGOs and between NGOs and governments. 

We also recommend that the Global Strategy with Street Children receive the full public endorsement of this Committee, support 

of the U.S. Congress and support of the international community. 

We recommend that the international community, including the 

United States, provide financial support to local in-country projects 

that work with street children, because resourcing these projects is 

not easy. People are doing the work but not getting the money they 

need to do it. 

We recommend that the U.S. Government strongly press the regime of Robert Mugabe to restore democracy, the rule of law, and 

basic human rights for all people in Zimbabwe. 

Finally, we recommend that the U.S. Government call for a full 

review of the Ugandan Government’s policy on street children, urge 

the Ugandan Government to immediately suspend its street roundups and, with all due respect to the leadership of the First Lady 

of Uganda, encourage the restructuring of the rehabilitation home 

so it is run by an independent board that operates with transparency and all the necessary resources for the proper rehabilitation of children of the streets. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Sexton follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MR. ANDY SEXTON, INTERNATIONAL COORDINATOR, CHILDREN AT RISK, OAS!S INTERNATIONAL

STREET CHILDREN: THE SITUATION IN EAST AND SOUTHERN AFRICA AND THE NEED FOR

A STRATEGIC GLOBAL RESPONSE. 

Mr Chairman, members of the sub-committee, I am honoured to be here today 

and I would like to thank you for holding this hearing on street children. The issue 

of street children is a global tragedy and a global opportunity. This hearing comes 

at a time when the issue of street children seems to have largely dropped off the 

radar of the media, donors and Governments. This makes the hearing all the more 

timely and important, so again I thank you. 

My name is Andy Sexton. I am the International Director for Children at Risk 

for OAS!S, an International Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), working in 8 

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1 Consortium on Street Children UK, www.streetchildren.co.uk 2Tac ̧on, P., A UNICEF response to the needs of abandoned and street children, unpublished, 

Geneva, UNICEF, 1985:3,4

countries. Our work focuses on the urban poor, especially children and youth. I 

began working with street children in Australia in 1994 and then established street 

children’s projects in three cities in Zimbabwe. In 2003 I joined OAS!S and am currently based in Uganda. OAS!S has projects working with street children in 

Zimbabwe and India and we have a project for the prevention of street girls in 

Uganda. 

My testimony will focus on two issues:

1. The situation of street children in East and Southern Africa, with particular 

reference to Uganda and Zimbabwe

2. Specific challenges related to current work with street children globally and 

possible strategic responses 

1. Background to the Issue of Street Children 

1.1 Towards a Definition of Street Children 

The term ‘street children’ is hotly debated. Some say it is negative—that it labels 

and stigmatises children. Others say it gives them an identity and a sense of belonging. It can include a very wide range of children who: are homeless; work on the 

streets but sleep at home; either do or do not have family contact; work in openair markets; live on the streets with their families; live in day or night shelters; 

spend a lot of time in institutions (e.g. prison); are sex workers. The term ‘street 

children’ is used because it is short and widely understood. However, we must acknowledge the problems and wherever possible we should ask the children what 

they think themselves. In reality, street children defy such convenient 

generalisations because each child is unique.1

The UNICEF definition of street children makes a distinction between children 

on and children of the street.

Children on the street are those whose family support base has become increasingly weakened (who) must share in the responsibility for the families’ survival by working in the city streets and market places. For these children . . . 

the home ceases to be the centre for play, culture and daily life. Nevertheless 

while the street becomes their daytime activity, most of these children return 

home most nights. While their family relationships may be deteriorating, they 

are still definitely in place, and these children continue to view life from the 

point of view of their families. 

Children of the streets are a much smaller number of children who daily 

struggle for survival without support, alone. While often called abandoned, they 

too might also have abandoned their families, tired of insecurity, rejection and 

aged up with violence (tired of violence in the family) . . . (Their) ties with 

home have now been broken . . . de facto (they) are without families.2

1.1.1 What are the limitations of this definition? 

The limitations of this definition are that it isn’t broad enough to cover the complexities of the issue. There are many children who ‘‘fall between the gaps’’ in this 

definition. For example, there are children who come to the streets and live there 

during the dry or warm seasons, but go home when it is wet or cold. Also there are 

many children who live with their families on the streets. Child prostitutes, who 

work the streets at night and not during the day, do not quite fit into this definition 

either. In addition, some children who would be considered of the street have occasional contact with their families, while other children who are on the streets don’t 

actually live with a relative they live with someone who is unrelated. It can be argued that children who accompany a physically challenged parent or other adult are 

a different category again. 

1.1.2 Expanding the definition 

One of the ways to resolve some of these limitations is to add a category of street 

children known as in the street children.

1. Children on the street, or children with regular family contact. Most of these 

children work on the streets because their families need money to survive. 

Many of them go to school and return home to their families at the end of 

the day. Besides working, some children are on the streets to have fun, to 

pass time or to escape the overcrowded conditions in their homes. Also in 

this group are children from squatter families and the slums. These children 

112

3Kilbourn, P., (ed), Street Children, A Guide to Effective Ministry, MARC, 1997:11,12

4Liebel, 1994:24

5 Cosgrove, J., Towards a working definition of street children, International Social Work, Vol. 

33:185–192, 1990 6 Ibid. 

7 Connolly, M., and Ennew, J., (eds), Children out of place, special issue of Childhood, Vol. 

3, 1996

have nothing to do in their homes so they frequently roam the streets, returning home only at night or at mealtime. This group of children, not yet 

deeply entrenched in street life, are more easily reached. They especially 

need to be targeted by prevention programs.

2. Children of the street, or children with occasional family contact. These children work on the street, do not go to school and seldom go home to their 

families. This group includes children from poverty-stricken families. Some 

have come to the city from deprived rural areas; others are runaways. Many 

run away from home because of sexual or physical abuse, parental alcoholism and neglect or mistreatment by relatives. Home has become a place 

of fear and misery rather than security, love and encouragement. These children, if they are to survive, are faced with the need to find food and shelter 

daily. They also need to find a sense of belonging among their peers. Soon 

children come to enjoy their newly found independence, free of adult control. 

It is vital to get the children in this group off the street before they become 

addicted to street life.

3. Children in the street, or children with no family contact. These children consider the streets their home. Here they seek shelter, food and a sense of belonging among their peers. This group represents children who are detached 

from their families and are either living on the streets or in shelters. Some 

are orphans whose parents have been killed in war or have died from illnesses such as AIDS. In addition, other children are abandoned by their parents because they are unable to care for them due to poverty, disease or personal problems. These children are not only victims of physical isolation but 

are also alone psychologically. In some cases these children have no memory 

of what home life was like. Working with this group of children is the most 

difficult. Because they have been badly abused by adults they should have 

been able to trust, winning their confidence is very difficult.3

1.1.3 Definitions using other factors 

There have been other attempts to define street children using concepts other 

than family connection. They relate to work, time, behaviour and location. 

A possible way of defining the street population is in relation to ‘work’. According 

to this definition, children of the street are those who do not have a ‘serious’ job, 

but who wander aimlessly around the streets, taking drugs and living from antisocial or illegal activities.4

The length of time a child has been ‘on the streets’ has frequently been used to 

distinguish between categories of street-children types. Other definitions have tried 

to specify the number of hours a child has to spend daily in the streets in order 

to be considered a street child.5

A street child is any individual under the age of majority whose behaviour is predominantly at variance with community norms for behaviour and whose primary 

support for his/her developmental needs is not the family or family substitute.6

Many children play on the streets but are not street children. There is sometimes 

nowhere else for them to play. Fabio Dallape (who directed the Undugu project in 

Kenya) has suggested using the word ‘avenue’ would be a better term than streets. 

Avenues, shopping malls, beaches, boulevards, railway and bus stations are all 

places where children are not supposed to be unaccompanied by an adult, and where 

nobody is supposed to sleep. Some people who work with street children therefore 

prefer to call them ‘children out of place’.7

1.1.4 Why is a Definition Useful? 

A definition is important for two main reasons:

1. It assists in determining the numbers and types of Street Children

2. It assists in identifying a projects target group

A definition is useful in order for practitioners to decide which children in an area 

are street children and what types of street children there are. This in turn can help 

them decide what group of children they will work with and what interventions 

might be appropriate. 

113

8 UNICEF UK Committee, Information Sheet on Street Children, January 1998

9Kilbourn, P., (ed), Children in Crisis: A New Commitment, MARC, 1996:21

1.2 A Global Tragedy 

Given the debate over defining street children, there are conflicting estimates 

about how many street children there are. However, one thing is clear, there are 

millions of children living and working on the streets of the world’s cities.

• At least 100 million children worldwide are believed to live at least part-time 

on the streets and work in the ‘urban informal sector’.8

• 10 million of these are of the streets.9

Around the world 

Latin America 40 million

Brazil 25 million

Asia 31.2 million

India 18 million

Philippines 1.2 million

Africa 10 million

USA New York 20,000

Child Hope, Testimony to the House Select Sub-Committee on Hunger, 1991

CWS, 1991 Global Calendar, New Society Publishers: 

Philadelphia, 1990

ONEWORLD, 17 November 1998, cited by UNICEF, November 1998

1.3 Life in the Streets 

Clearly, the experience of street children differs throughout the world. For instance, there are the average age of a child in the streets in the Western World is 

higher than the age of street children in the Developing World. 

However there are also many similarities. A child who for whatever reason, ends 

up being forced from home or runs away, usually ends up in the streets of a town 

or city. Once there, they soon become part of the mosaic of street life. They usually 

join a group of children in similar circumstances and become embroiled in a life of 

petty crime, substance abuse, begging, occasional work, violence and sex. They also 

experience freedom and a life without rules, except the rules of their gang. Sometimes an adult meets them, as they enter the town or city, who then exploits them 

for their labour or bodies. They often end up sick, injured, HIV+, pregnant or even 

dead. 

It has been proven again and again that the longer a child is on the streets, the 

harder it is for them to leave the streets. Also if a long-term street child does leave 

the streets, the longer they have been the in the streets, the stronger the pull to 

return. 

1.4 Causes of Street Children 

There are both macro and micro issues that result in Street Children, including:

1. Social catastrophes (HIV/AIDS pandemic, ethnic conflict, trafficking)

2. Political catastrophes (war, corruption, wastage of resources)

3. Natural catastrophes (famine, flood, earthquake)

4. Poverty

5. Rural—urban migration

6. Economic collapse (unemployment leading sometimes to the loss of home, 

parents, family, education)

7. Family breakdown

8. Alcohol or drug abuse of a family member

9. Child abuse including violence, sexual or emotional abuse and neglect

10. Child labour and sexual exploitation 

114

10 The Civil Society Forum for East and Southern Africa on Promoting and Protecting the 

Rights of Street Children, February 2002 11 Chalke, S. and Dixon, P., Special Report on HIV AIDS, OAS!S, 2004 12Per Engebak, UNICEF, Alpha Orphans Generation Report, Plus News, August 2004

2. The Situation of Street Children in East and Southern Africa 

Africa is young, urban and poor. Half of the continent’s population is under 15. 

Thirty seven percent of the population lives in towns of cities—the majority living 

in slums and squatter settlements. The average urban growth rate is estimated to 

be 5% per annum. Thirty four of the world’s Highly Indebted Poor Countries are in 

Africa.10

The related challenges these statistics bring, are compounded by the HIV/AIDS 

pandemic. It is estimated that more than 43 million people have already perished 

from the disease. This figure could rise to 200 million in the next 30 years.11

UNICEF estimates that there will be 20 million HIV/AIDS orphans by 2010. According to the Alpha Orphans Generation project, Sub-Saharan Africa had 11 million 

orphans in 2003.12

One of the results of the situation facing Africa is an increasing number of street 

children. Today we are seeing second and third generation street children in some 

African towns and cities. 

The issue of street children in East and Southern Africa is a relatively new phenomenon when compared with the history of street children in South and Central 

America and parts of Asia. It only started to become a significant and widespread 

phenomenon in the 1980s. 

The Civil Society Forum for East and Southern Africa on Promoting and Protecting the Rights of Street Children has quantified the numbers of street children 

in these regions.

Country Numbers of Street 

Children City Number of Street Children 

Ethiopia 150,000 Addis Ababa 60,000

Kenya 250,000 Nairobi 60,000

Mozambique 3,500–4,500

South Africa 250,000

Uganda 10,000

Zambia 75,000

Zimbabwe 12,000 Harare 5,000

The situations I will describe in more detail below are the two situations I am 

most familiar with. They are in some ways not typical of the responses in East and 

Southern Africa. However they represent one approach to addressing the issue of 

street children. 

3. Current Situation in Uganda 

3.1 Case study 

*P. is one of a family of 6 children from Northern Uganda, who fled to Kampala with their mother when the situation in the Internally Displaced Peoples 

(IDP) Camp in Gulu was too much for them to cope with any longer. In constant 

danger of being abducted, or starving, the family came to find a better life in 

Uganda’s capital. 

They ended up in a place called Kibuye, on the other side of town from Oasis’ 

Bambejja Project. Local people took pity on the family, which includes a baby 

of less than one year old, and allowed them to temporarily stay in a small wooden shed. The mother was given some bananas to sell, and would walk all day 

long carrying a basket of bananas looking for customers. Neighbours would loan 

her saucepans to cook food in the evening. 

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13 CSCUK website 14 Uganda, Lonely Planet Publications, 2004 15www.iExplore.com 16 Refugee Law Project, Behind the Violence: Causes, Consequences and the Search for Solutions to the War in Northern Uganda, RLP Working Paper No. 11, February 2004:13 17 AVERT, www.avert.org 

One day, the mother found her way to the Bambejja Project, having heard 

about our services, and begged the social worker to take her family in. The social 

worker agreed to visit her home, not realizing it was over an hour’s walk away 

from the project centre. On seeing the situation, the social worker instantly knew 

this family was in need of urgent assistance. P., now seven years, was enrolled 

into Primary Grade 2 at the Bambejja Catch-Up School, and the entire family 

shortly after were assisted to relocate to a more suitable dwelling closer to 

Bambejja.

P. could so easily have ended up on the streets begging or having to prostitute 

herself to survive. She is one of the lucky ones. 

3.2 Country Overview 

Uganda has a population of between 23–30 million people. It is estimated that 

51% of the population is under 18.13

Uganda achieved independence from Britain in 1962. Since then it has had a turbulent political history. Idi Amin was responsible for 300,000 deaths during his 

eight-year dictatorial presidency from 1971 to 1979 and the economy collapsed. One 

cause of this was the expulsion of the 70,000 person strong Asian community and 

the nationalisation of British plantations and companies. Human rights abuses continued under the presidency of Milton Obote during 1980 to 1985—it being estimated that a further 100,000 lives were claimed during this time.14

President Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986 and has been largely credited 

with the rapid development of the country since then. The economy averaged growth 

of more than 6% during the 1990s15, and is now thought of as one of the most rapidly developing countries in Africa. 

As a result of the development, rural communities have flocked to Kampala, in 

the hope of a better life. Despite advances made, the city is little equipped to deal 

with a rapidly expanding population and the result is an increase in the population 

of the slum areas. 

The 18-year war in the North of Uganda waged by The Lord’s Resistance Army 

(LRA), a rebel group operating under Joseph Kony, has also contributed to ruralurban migration and added to the slum problem in towns and cities. It is estimated 

that since 1986, 20,000—25000 children as young as 7 years old have been abducted 

by the LRA to act as sex slaves and child soldiers.16

Uganda is one of the few African countries where HIV prevalence rates have declined, and it is seen as a rare example of success in a continent facing a severe 

AIDS crisis. Uganda’s policies are credited with having brought the HIV prevalence 

rate down from around 15% in the early 1990s to 5% in 2001. At the end of 2003, 

the government and the UN estimate that only 4.1% of adults had the virus. The 

country is seen as having implemented a well timed and successful public education 

campaign.17

However, HIV/AIDS remains a significant challenge. In research that OAS!S conducted in 2004, of the 102 girls it was working with at the Bambejja Project,

36% of the girls had no living parent 

33% had 1 living parent 

31% had both parents living

31% of the girls were AIDS orphans (death of both parents) 

44% of girls come from HIV/AIDS affected families (where one or more parents 

or siblings have the virus)

12% of the girls were not living with a relative 

42% of the girls were recorded as having a carer with significant health problems.

16% were originally on the street (none were recorded as currently on the 

street).

It is estimated that there are 10,000 street children in Uganda. The underlying 

causes are displacement due to the conflict in Northern Uganda, HIV/AIDS, urban 

poverty, and family breakdown. 

116

3.3 Street Children in Uganda: The Government’s Response 

In May 2002, the Ugandan Government instituted a plan to remove children from 

the streets of Kampala, rehabilitate them at a renovated juvenile remand home and 

then re-settle them with their families. The Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social 

Development (MGLSD) was largely responsible for the formulation of this plan but 

it concerned the cooperation of the Kampala City Council, the Police and one lead 

NGO, ‘Give Me a Chance’. The plan involved forcibly removing the children through 

‘round-up’ operations, and then trucking them to the Kamparingisa National Rehabilitation Centre (KNRC). It faced legal challenges within the Government but was 

pushed through after pressure from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ugandan 

Tourism Board and other sectors of Government interested in ‘‘cleaning up’’ 

Kampala’s streets. The First Lady of Uganda, Mrs Janet Museveni, raised the funds 

necessary to renovate KNRC. 

Up until this point, there were many NGOs working with Kampala’s Street Children. Seventeen of these organisations were working together within the framework 

of the Inter-NGO Forum. This Forum then engaged with the Government over the 

planned round up strategy. However their proposal of August 1st 2001, which included NGO involvement at every level of the plan, was rejected. This Forum then 

undertook to form the Kamparingisa Support Team, which committed to going out 

to KNRC on weekdays to provide various support programmes for the children including counselling, sports, education, drama and art. 

Apart from the formation of the Inter-NGO Forum, other achievements had been 

made before the round-ups were implemented. Practice Guidelines for Working with 

Street Children had been written; a week of NGO to Government advocacy instituted in 2000; Family and Child Protection Units set up within the police force; a 

National Street Children Committee was established; informal education strategies 

and foster care schemes developed. 

In the first forcible removal, 145 children were taken to KNRC including four 

teenage mothers. Since 2002, the round-ups have been continuing approximately 

every four months. While the total number of children that have been taken to 

KNRC is not available, a figure of 200 resettled was given by the lead NGO Give 

Me a Chance. 

In May 2005, we commissioned some research into the validity and impact of this 

approach to dealing with the issue of street children. The draft report has been presented to the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (in the Presidents Office) for comment. 

The research was conducted via interviews with Government officials, staff at 

Kamparingisa, children at Kamparingisa, street children, businesses and the general public. The findings reveal that:

1. The children taken to KNRC appreciated having a bed, consistent food and 

schooling.

2. The general public and businesses reacted positively to the decrease in the 

numbers of street children. They felt that levels of harassment and criminal 

activity had dropped as a result.

3. The round-ups and reception at KNRC lacked co-ordination, with the staff 

at KNRC sometimes unaware that more children would be arriving.

4. KNRC is under staffed by 50% of what is needed.

5. KNRC continues to be a remand facility for juvenile offenders and that the 

two groups, offenders and street children, are held together.

6. Adults are also picked up in the roundups and held with the children.

7. KNRC lacks electricity, running water and functioning toilet facilities.

8. Necessary medical supplies are not available and food purchased does not 

always arrive at KNRC.

9. Allegations of corporal punishment and sexual abuse were common amongst 

children who have run away from KNRC to the streets. One child respondent commented that ‘‘KNRC is not a place for children, it has no solutions 

just digging, slashing grass, hard work, fetching water and beatings’’.

10. The round ups have sent children ‘underground’ and there is now a community of children who feel they cannot be seen. They are ripe for criminal 

exploitation.

11. KNRC was more about hiding the problem of street children than helping 

the children. This plan does nothing to deal with the causes of the problem 

(the war in the North of Uganda, abuse in the family, children being orphaned through HIV/AIDS and poverty amongst the Karamajong people in 

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18Tibajuka, A. K., UN Envoy on Human Settlement Issues, Report of the Fact Finding Mission to Zimbabwe, to Assess the Scope and Impact of Operation Murambatsvina, July 2005. 

the east of the country) and so there are always more children filling the 

vacuum left by the ones removed.

While there are street children in other towns around Uganda, the majority of 

children are in Kampala. In these other towns NGOs are also at work, probably the 

best known of which is Child Restoration Outreach working in Mbale, Mbarara and 

Jinja. 

4. Current Situation In Zimbabwe 

On 19 May 2005, with little or no warning the Government of Zimbabwe embarked on an operation to ‘clean up’ its cities. It was a ‘crash’ operation known as 

‘Operation Murambatsvina’, referred to also as Operation Restore Order. It started 

in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, and rapidly evolved into a nationwide demolition and eviction campaign carried out by the police and the army. Popularly referred to as ‘Operation Tsunami’ because of its speed and ferocity, it resulted in the 

destruction of homes, businesses and vending sites. It is estimated that some 

700,000 people in cities across the country have lost their homes, their source of 

livelihood, or both.18

The result of this so called ‘clean up’ for OAS!S has been that four of our staff 

are homeless, four OAS!S pre-schools in high-density suburbs have been destroyed 

and all the street girls we have been working with, have been rounded-up and detained in an unknown location.

B. is one of the girls who has disappeared. She is 15 and was on the streets 

because her parents had died from HIV/AIDS, and her Aunt refused to care for 

her, saying that she was ‘‘rude’’. It was the OAS!S Tanaka Project staff’s assessment that her Aunt was already overwhelmed with her own problems and used 

the girl’s behaviour as an excuse. B. was due to be in the next intake of girls 

into the Tanaka Project’s Training Program. It is assumed that government 

forces took her to Caledonia Farm, but when the farm was closed she was relocated to a juvenile remand home. However although OAS!S staff have been able 

to access one of these facilities, she was not amongst the 12 street girls that they 

found there. Staff have attempted to talk to the Department of Social Welfare in 

order to find B. and other girls that are still missing, but they have so far been 

unsuccessful. 

G. is another girl with whom OASIS has been working. Although we have 

been working with her for over a year, she was not ready to leave the streets. 

When was asked what issues she was struggling with on the streets, G. said, 

‘‘The main problem on the streets is the Police. They round us up and then if 

you want to get out of prison they tell you, you must have sex with them first. 

Last week, they came to our base and we had no blankets then one of the Policeman said to me there were plastics round the back, which we could use as blankets. Then when I went there, he followed me and asked me to have sex with 

him. When I refused he forced me, he didn’t care that I was crying. Its hard because you don’t want to sleep with the policeman but if you don’t want to remain 

in jail, you end up sleeping with them’’. 

When the staff met her on the streets a few weeks ago, she spoke at length of 

her experiences of ‘Operation Murambatsvina’. She reported that, ‘‘during the 

first ‘round-up’, the Police took us to a bush where they beat us up and left us 

there. We walked 15km to get to the main road we continued walking until we 

got a ride to Harare. When we got to town, our legs were swollen. We were 

rounded-up again and I was taken to Caledonia farm. I ran away 2 days later’’.

Historically the Government’s response to street children in Zimbabwe has varied. 

This is not the first time that ‘clean up’ operations have taken place. In operations 

in 1996/1997, children were removed into the bush and left there or were taken to 

a disused refugee facility beside the Gonarezhou National Park called Chambuta. 

Many escaped from this place through literally lion infested bush, and returned to 

the streets. 

At one stage, the First Lady of Zimbabwe, Mrs Grace Mugabe, raised money for 

rehabilitation centres in the main cities of Harare and Bulawayo, but nothing came 

of these plans. More recently the Department of Social Welfare, Councils and other 

Stakeholders have been organised into Task Forces on Street Children with funding 

from UNICEF. This follows a model that I was involved in establishing in July 1997 

in Bulawayo. 

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19www.zwnews.com 

Operation Murambatsvina has changed the whole operating environment. On my 

visit in June 2005 to Zimbabwe, I saw a state of total confusion. It could be argued 

that the downward spiral in Zimbabwe began in 1997 with the awarding of large 

payouts to veterans of the Zimbabwean Independence Struggle. This was followed 

by an economically crippling war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Then when 

the referendum on changes to the Constitution went against the Government and 

they knew that in forth coming elections they were in danger of losing power, they 

embarked on various measures to retain power. These included the vote winning 

land reform process, infiltration of the Church, silencing of the Independent Press, 

stacking of the Judiciary, intimidation, violence and election fraud.19 The results of 

the policies of the Zimbabwean Government have been economic and social crisis. 

Zimbabwe has one of the fastest shrinking economies in the world and has been 

strongly criticised by the International Community for its human rights record. 

4.1 The Non-Governmental Response to the Issue of Street Children 

In virtually every town and city in Zimbabwe where there have been street children, churches and civil society has responded to assist the children, some with 

greater impact than others. Across the country there are twelve NGOs assisting 

street children alongside the Task Forces. I worked with Scripture Union to establish the Thuthuka Street Children’s Project in Bulawayo, the Simukai Street Youth 

Programme in Mutare (in partnership with Family Aids Caring Trust) and the 

Chiedza Street Children’s Project in Masvingo. Each of these projects carried the 

same values but was constructed differently due to the needs of the children in 

these cities, the reasons why they were on the streets, and the general context. 

When I left Zimbabwe we had a 69% success rate of rehabilitating street children 

and resettling them with their families or in supported accommodation. 

Currently many organisations have to focus on locating the children with whom 

they were working. In my opinion, the main challenges that these projects were facing leading up to this new situation were:

1. Containing the numbers of street children (numbers are increasing due to 

the worsening situation in Zimbabwe).

2. Funding issues as many donors have left the country.

3. Competition between themselves rather than cooperation leading to a lack of 

strategic planning across cities and also across the country.

4. A need for increased capacity in the area of psychosocial support and therapy.

5. A decimated government Department of Social Welfare as the Zimbabwean 

environment forced government staff to take jobs out side the country.

6. Government resistance to granting birth certificates to orphans. 

5. Global Opportunity 

In February 2005, a steering committee was formed to look at the possibility of 

developing a global strategy with street children. The Global Strategy with Street 

Children team consists of representatives from organisations working with street 

children directly or indirectly. The first task that we completed was to survey 20 

other key people in the field to ascertain their experiences around certain issues. 

One of the questions asked was ‘‘What do you believe are the greatest barrier(s) 

to collective or coordinated action on street children?’’ The overwhelming response 

was lack of cooperation between agencies and lack of cooperation from governments. 

The situation in both Zimbabwe and Uganda clearly demonstrates both problems. 

Another question was asked, ‘‘In your experience, what are the main challenges 

that projects working with street children face? The main responses were to do with 

training, support and resources. My own experiences bear testimony to this. 

As a result of this feedback and ensuing discussions, a global strategy with street 

children is emerging. A meeting of 17 experts in the field, representing 12 NGOs 

working across the world, will be held between September 29th and October 1st, 

2005. 

The strategy being proposed is simple in design. It proposes to develop teams in 

hub cities in 14 regions of the world, who will:

1. Strengthen, support and connect existing street children’s projects.

2. Motivate and train new projects and workers.

3. Research and advocate.

4. Facilitate strategic citywide and countrywide responses.

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5. Encourage innovative initiatives.

A small/resourcing team will support these Regional Teams. It is hoped that by 

establishing these teams, work amongst street children will be improved and expanded, the aim being to reach all of the street children of the world in a systematic 

and strategic manner. 

6. Recommendations 

Current international legislation makes it abundantly clear that the rights of 

street children are to be protected, as enshrined in the United Nations Convention 

on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of 

the Child. What is important is how this converts into practise. How does this translate into protecting and assisting street children today? Children like those mentioned in this statement. Responses should ensure that the children’s best interests 

are central. In addition they should include appropriate input from the children 

themselves and be strategic involving cooperation of key stakeholders. In the light 

of the above we make the following recommendations for the Congress and the 

wider international community:

1. It is vital that the United States Government and the international community engage with these issues because these children are the most vulnerable 

to exploitation and abuse and are unprotected by many of their governments. 

Therefore we recommend that the Global Strategy with Street Children re- ceive the full, public endorsement of this committee, support of the US Congress, and support of the international community.

2. There is a desperate need for strategic citywide and countrywide pilot programs, that are well researched and implemented, and that can be duplicated in other nations. Therefore we recommend that the US Government 

through USAID, and other appropriate agencies, fund research that leads to 

comprehensive and strategic initiatives that foster cooperation between 

NGOS, and between NGOS and governments.

3. Many problems associated with assisting street children relate to problems 

of resourcing, support and coordination. Therefore we recommend that the 

international community, including the United States, provide financial support for local in-country projects that work with street children.

4. The situation in Zimbabwe affects not just the street children but also the 

entire population and makes efforts to protect and assist the street children 

virtually impossible. Therefore we recommend that the US Government 

strongly press the regime of Robert Mugabe to restore democracy, the rule 

of law, and basic human rights for all people in Zimbabwe.

5. While the situation in Uganda is not as extreme, democratic ideals, translated into the treatment of street children, are not fully entrenched. Therefore we recommend that the US Government call for a full review of the 

Ugandan Government’s policy on street children, urge the Ugandan Government to immediately suspend its street round-ups, and, with all due respect 

to the leadership of the First Lady of Uganda, encourage the restructuring 

of the Kamparingisa Rehabilitation Home so that it is run by an independent 

board that operates with transparency and all the necessary resources for 

the proper rehabilitation of children of the streets.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Sexton, thank you so very much for your testimony as well. 

Let me begin with you on the global strategy. Could you elaborate on that a little bit more for the Committee, the September 

29th to October 1st meeting, who will be participating, how many 

NGOs, government actors? 

Mr. SEXTON. At this stage, it is a bringing together of practitioners, of people who have been working with street children for 

a long time. And it is not meant to be exclusive, but it is a small 

team, initially, to look at setting the foundations for a global strategy, to look at debating the issues that it raises. 

The idea is, as I mentioned in my report, that we would scale up, 

multiply the impact of work done among street children by developing regional support hubs, 14 of these, around the world. We 

would like to start by piloting a few and really to work with the 

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projects on the ground, provide them the support, provide them the 

mentorship, very similar to what was being shared by Teresa and 

what they are doing in Rio, so basically trying to lift that and then 

also grow new workers. That is the basics of it, as well as to try 

to encourage strategic countrywide and citywide initiatives, people 

getting together and cooperating, not competing. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

Let me ask you, Father Cullen, you mentioned how the courts 

have been very helpful in the Philippines in ensuring that at least 

some of these kids don’t go to an adult detention center. 

Are the legislature and the Presidency also working in that regard? Have they thought of any criminal justice reform that might 

at long last separate children from those who would prey on them 

in the jails? 

Father CULLEN. Yes. The courts are now much more cooperative, 

as we said. They assign them not to adult facility; they assign them 

to rehabilitation for youth. But the response that we have had now 

from the Executive leaves much to be desired, and also the Congress has been very slow to respond to our 9-year campaign to pass 

the juvenile justice bill. 

However, since the CNN program, the Senate mobilized themselves, and last week they signed the juvenile justice bill at their 

level, at the committee level. So it will go on the floor fairly soon. 

But still, we are appealing to local governments. They are also the 

ones really responsible for this caring for children in their municipalities, and they don’t care about it. 

Mr. SMITH. We can get it, but do you have a copy of that juvenile 

justice bill? 

Father CULLEN. Yes, we will have one sent to you right away. 

Mr. SMITH. Is that a model that could also be replicated at a regional and local level? 

Father CULLEN. That applies to all levels in the Philippines. 

That law will protect children. It makes it illegal for them ever to 

be put behind bars. 

Mr. SMITH. So the state and local jurisdictions would have to follow that? 

Father CULLEN. Of course. That will be national law. We will 

send you a copy of that. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. You mentioned, as well, the Amerasians. 

What is the current estimate of Amerasians? Is it 50,000, or is it 

more? 

Father CULLEN. Nationwide, there is something like 50,000. It is 

only an estimate. We did a survey in 1992 when we organized this 

class action suit of how many would be eligible, and we were able, 

with the help of the government’s Department of Social Welfare, 

we estimated 3,500 whom we could identify by name. But ever 

since then, of course, more children show up. There is more than 

that. But official figures, we did get 3,500. So they reckon many, 

many more. 

Mr. SMITH. Are these street children? 

Father CULLEN. No, these are young people who are fathered by 

American servicemen and then more or less abandoned. 

Mr. SMITH. Is there an estimate as to how many of those children 

are on the streets? 

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Father CULLEN. We don’t have an estimate, no. 

Mr. SMITH. You mentioned your special program. How does that 

differentiate from the other program? 

Father CULLEN. Many of these children, we have helped them to 

maybe go to high school. We find with the support—we support 

their mother for many years and send them to school. Then they 

graduate from high school. We helped them there. Now we have a 

special computer-based training program for Amerasians specifically with Microsoft Philippines. So they are graduating, and some 

have jobs. We send others to medical school, nursing aids. They are 

qualified. So in this way, we have sort of a human development 

program for Filipino-American children. 

Mr. SMITH. I see. 

If I could, Ms. Santos, you mentioned the ECA has its official legislation, but 15 years after it was put into law, most of it is still 

merely words on paper. Has any of that changed since the Lula 

Government came into power? 

Ms. SANTOS. Well, the Lula Government has developed some programs. For instance, they give some money to kids to keep them 

from working and to encourage them to go to school. But that is 

limited to a number of kids from 10 to 14 years old. Then after 

that, they go back to work. 

So programs are not policies. So what we think are more policies 

than programs, because the programs, they help. It is helpful, as 

I put in my testimony. Some local government programs help 

Joao’s life and family, but for a certain time, for a survival situation or to solve a problem that is happening that moment. But it 

is not something that will give a solution to the root of the problem. So this is what we have so far, several programs. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. Mr. Payne. 

Mr. PAYNE. Let me thank you, each of you, for your testimony, 

and once again, we really get back to the whole question of trying 

to eliminate abject poverty. If we can really get a real war on poverty around the world, I think that many of the problems that we 

see will evaporate and be less grave. 

I just wonder, Father Cullen, has your organization ever approached the U.S. military authorities about the Amerasians? And 

now that there is sort of less U.S. presence there, do you find that 

there are problems in other bases where there are American soldiers, Guam or Okinawa, maybe even Japan in the old days? 

Father CULLEN. Well, I am not really familiar. I know Okinawa 

has a serious problem because of the huge Marine base there. I 

have been to Okinawa and worked there with some local NGOs, 

and I have not done research or work in that area, but they have 

come also to visit us, and that is how we know there are similar 

problems there. 

The Amerasian problem in the Philippines is really one again of 

just—it is against poverty. Not so many are actually on the streets, 

because they did get help from the initiative of the Women’s Caucus group who helped them with U.S. aid grant of $650,000 way 

back in 1994 or 1995. 

We have our own source of funds from fair trade and other 

sources from that. We inhibited ourselves, since we campaigned for 

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that lobbying, we inhibited ourselves from receiving any benefit. So 

that is our situation in dealing with this. 

Mr. PAYNE. It is unfortunate, in my opinion, that the U.S. military over the decades, since World War II, has been irresponsible. 

We feel that there should have been more attention given, even in 

Europe and Germany. There were a number of children that were 

fathered by United States GI’s who left and abandoned them. In 

Guam, it got so bad, they wanted the United States military to 

leave at one time. There were several rapes. 

So I do think this whole militarization, we see it in the UN now, 

we see it where we are asking the UN to be sure that they reign 

in on combatants who are peacekeepers, supposedly there to bring 

peace to countries, and are preying on people who have no 

strength, so-to-speak. But I think that it is unfortunate that we as 

a world leader did not really try to discipline even our own military. Military people are away, and there are inherent problems in 

militarization. 

That is why I am so opposed to the overly militarized world we 

find ourselves in. This is a problem that has been bothering me for 

many, many years, and it doesn’t seem we are getting any better 

so far as militarization is concerned. 

I wonder about in Brazil, do you find, Ms. Santos, that the entertainment business or the carnival and so forth, have you seen any 

pull on women by virtue of that entertainment, the tourism, and 

I guess even worse, in Thailand? I don’t think Brazil can be compared to Thailand at all. But what is your opinion about that whole 

impact on women? 

Ms. SANTOS. Well, in this past year, the first time our country 

launched a campaign against prostitution during carnival and was 

really trying to push sex tourism, it is something that is still very 

strong in our country. We need more awareness, we need to do 

more research. And even up in the northeast is the main problem. 

And a lot of airplanes hired for sex and tourism. And we need more 

laws on that issue, because we—I don’t want to compare Brazil 

with Thailand, but Brazil is the second after Thailand. It is the 

10th economy. And I cannot accept that, when we have also law 

that is a model. And we have so many children being abused. And 

our society needs to be more conscious of it and there needs to be 

more money put to stop it, and also more research and more policy, 

specifically, because a lot of women find also, as an economic opportunity, to leave the country. It happens a lot during the carnival. 

And we have a lot of abortion after that. And a lot of main problems of child prostitution. It is not only in carnival, it is through 

the whole year, and thousands and thousands of children. And in 

the northeast, we have the problem with the Indian girls. It is a 

different situation because the Indians have a completely different—the native Indians—they have a completely different style 

of life, and because a lot of community has been destroyed and several children have been sold to some sexual industry. And they 

have been like slaves there. And some research has been done. But 

our country really needs to push more into that situation. 

Mr. PAYNE. Just finally, there is a large number of Afro-Brazilians in Brazil. And just the country might be almost 50 percent deVerDate Mar 21 2002 12:53 Jan 18, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00126 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\AGI\091305\23435.000 HINTREL1 PsN: SHIRL
123

scendants of Africa, perhaps the largest number of African-descent 

people anywhere in the world outside of Africa. 

Have you seen any—they say that you don’t have a racial problem in Brazil, it is just class. All of Latin America is class. It just 

happens that the bottom of the class seems to be all dark people, 

and the other tops of the class seem to be less. Although a little 

mixer up there, but by and large, you can see the classes by—it is 

not racial. I have been told that all my life. We fought racial discrimination in the U.S.A. When I talk to my Latin leaders they 

may say, we don’t have a race problem, it is just class. 

Do you have any comments on that whole situation? 

Ms. SANTOS. Yeah, we do have racial problems. And the situation 

on the street children, when they first started building homes and 

orphanages for children was because after they set the slavery free, 

because the kids start hanging around, and they were kind of disturbing society. So they had to look for a solution for the Black 

children. 

And then it starts becoming a huge problem. And then, they saw 

them as they need to clean up things in 1888, and then in the early 

1900s they start trying to do something to avoid delinquents because the delinquent children were the Black children to start 

with. 

So in that concept, there were problems. And they didn’t want 

to find a solution for them. And that put them in a home or an orphanage. So that brought—through the years, the problems start 

arising. And there is a big racial problem until today. It is not because of the—Brazil is considered the melting pot of the nations. 

It is so mixed that it is not well seen from the outside. But as you 

try to find jobs, as you try to look for the education in certain place, 

you will see the reaction of society, again, with the racial problems. 

Mr. PAYNE. We raised it with—the Congressional Black Caucus 

raised it with the President of the country in regard to trying to 

have some problems seen in Colombia, because this is becoming 

more and more of a problem in the Latin countries. And we have 

raised the issue of having some attention drawn and having a Cabinet-level attention drawn to the problem about trying to come up 

with solutions. And we have been promised by Lula that they will 

take a look at it, but we are hoping that it can move along more 

rapidly than what we have seen. 

Ms. SANTOS. And one thing that I wanted to talk about that, 

right now, we are discussing about number of Blacks in school, in 

the public school in University, and I personally, I think that we 

should not address it that way, because in my point of view, who 

is Black and who is White in Brazil when it is a mixed population? 

So I think that raises more discrimination against the dark people 

we would say, and there is always, when we had to fill out form, 

people say, ‘‘Are you black, white, yellow?’’ And so a lot of that 

brings a lot of discrimination also. 

So, it is a big issue in the moment in the country, who is against, 

who is not. And I really think that people should be seen as one. 

And, as they wanted to have 20 percent of the space for Black people, but like my niece, I have a niece that is White, I have a niece 

that is black in color. What they are? One can go to school, the 

124

other one can’t. So there is an issue. And I think that we should 

not consider that and really see them as equal. 

Mr. PAYNE. Right. Like I say, we have had a lot of conversation 

and this whole subject has come up. They do realize that when you 

go to higher education you find very few people that can be really 

detected as being specifically from the African heritage. However 

like I say, when you get into race, I guess because of the many 

years of not focusing on it because it was always considered just 

a class thing, I think once they start, even the President admitted 

once they start looking at it, they are finding that it is more difficult, there is racial discrimination. There is racial discrimination 

in employment, there are very few percentage of Blacks in higher 

education. There are very few top of the military. If you go right 

down the line at the bottom, like I said, in the large population. 

Ms. SANTOS. If you see army, you will hardly see any Blacks. But 

in the army, you will see there is a big discrimination. I don’t want 

to go into that, but you can see a discrimination there. 

But it is very true that social level has more discrimination, social level than anything else. There are places in Rio that a low 

class can never go inside. There are shops that a low class cannot 

get in. So when you talk about inter-marriage of high social level 

with someone from low social level, it is a disaster. It brings a lot 

of problems. So I would say that there are more social level discrimination than race discrimination. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Pitts. 

Mr. PITTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Father Cullen, you mentioned the Amerasians. What would you like to see the United 

States Government do about the Amerasian children around the 

military bases in the Philippines? Number 2, I was interested, you 

said death squads were formed in Davao. What gave rise to this 

in Davao, not in Manila? And are these police or what kind of people? 

Father CULLEN. With the death squads, there is always some 

extrajudicial killing now in General Santos City and in Manila. But 

it is not as much or as frequent or as regular as in Davao. 

Mr. PITTS. Who are the death squads? Are they police? 

Father CULLEN. Well, we can’t accuse them. I was sued the last 

time I indicated that there was a responsibility even by the mayor. 

Although we didn’t accuse him, but we did point out that authorities should take account and be held accountable for the number 

of children who are being killed, as well as adults, many adults. 

But the finger is pointing and everything points that way, impunity. No? Though everybody is quite scared to say anything about 

it. 

As far as Amerasian children, we are presently receiving, we 

have our own funds. Education is the way out for most of the 

Amerasians. With encouragement, support and the education programs, they try very well and succeed, all the kids we have had. 

Actually it is a charity-based in Munich, Germany, who is supporting some of our children also. 

Of course, we have some responsibility. We always believe, have 

believed, you know, of the U.S. people, authority these children 

have—they are children of U.S. servicemen to a large extent, and 

125

any help to give them a better life, no? We don’t expect that they 

have a necessarily—applying for to migrate or apply for citizenship. 

It is not necessarily the answer. They have grown up in a different 

culture, a different language, but just an opportunity to—for further opportunity for education is usually the best way to go for 

these young people. 

Mr. PITTS. Ms. Santos, the problem of police violence against 

street children in Brazil, how pervasive is that? Are there localities 

dealing effectively with that problem? 

Ms. SANTOS. The problem of——

Mr. PITTS. Police violence against street children, you know, the 

death squads. 

Ms. SANTOS. Yes. I would like to talk more in general of how society sees the killing of the street children. Unfortunately, because 

of violence, a lot of people in our society would prefer to see a dead 

child who can—who is a threat for them than facing a criminal tomorrow. 

So, our society needs to understand the rights of the children. 

Our society needs to understand that they can change and there 

is a different way to approach violence. And there are some cases 

that the police, as was presented in 1993, the killing, and this is 

something that happens. But in a sense, it is encouraged for some 

people who, as I said, who thinks it is better to clean up the streets 

and who do not understand rights, the rights of the children. 

Mr. PITTS. Thank you. Mr. Sexton, you have given us a number 

of excellent suggestions here in your testimony. You mentioned 

citywide and countrywide strategies to address the needs—the 

issues of street children. Could you elaborate on that just a little 

bit? What do you mean by strategies? 

Ms. SANTOS. I am sorry. Could you——

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Sexton. 

Mr. SEXTON. Yes, Congressman Pitts. I think one of the serious 

disappointments for me has been the fact that there is just too 

much competition rather than cooperation between organizations 

working with street children. Therefore, the impact that is possible 

is greatly reduced and hampered. For example, in Harare, in 

Zimbabwe, there is some 7, perhaps 14 organizations claiming to 

work with street children and 7 active. But they weren’t working 

together. Because it becomes a matter of egos. It becomes a matter 

of competition for resources. And so rather than looking at the 

whole problem and seeing what they can do together to address the 

problem, they would rather compete with each other. And the 

street children know it. So they play one organization off against 

another. 

So they go to one organization for this and then they say, oh, 

they treated me badly in this organization, et cetera et cetera. 

So we need to break that down. We need to start working together on a citywide basis and on a countrywide basis. We need to 

start sharing information between organizations. When you start 

working where a child comes from one area, we need to start saying, what organization works in that area? How can we work together to take that child back to where they come from? How can 

we, as two organizations, work to support that child once they have 

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been resettled? Those are sorts of really obvious strategies. But 

they are just not happening currently. 

So that is the sort of thing I am meaning that we need citywide 

and countrywide cooperation between NGOs. But it doesn’t just 

stop there. It needs to be between governments and NGOs as well. 

I think the Gamby situation highlights the fact that the government is under a lot of pressure from the tourism industry and others, they decide that the best thing to do is just to clean those kids 

up off the streets, disregarding the wide sort of work that was already being done and the progress that was being made in that 

city. So there needs to be cooperation, between government and 

NGOs as well, in order to really address and take this issue on. 

Mr. PITTS. With projected increase in sub-Saharan Africa, something like 20 million orphans, this has security implications in relation to the increase in the population of AIDS orphans and street 

children. Would you not agree? 

Mr. SEXTON. I would agree and it was the subject some 3 years 

ago, 4 years ago, of a conference in Johannesburg run by the Institute for Security Studies, I think it is called. And at that, they 

were looking at this issue, what implications does this have for the 

continent, a whole lot of children that are not socialized, that are 

parentless, that have no values, that are struggling to make ends 

meet, surviving. They are rife for exploitation, exploitation by 

criminals, exploitation by governments, and in Zimbabwe in the 

2002 elections—and it was referred to by the Chairman earlier—

I tried to stop the street children from being exploited as thugs, 

rounding up people who attend Mr. McGarvey’s election campaigns. 

So these children were being used as thugs just to bring people 

together to make sure they attended these rallies. So they are rife 

for exploitation. This is a security issue in terms of thinking about 

the whole idea of terrorism, these children are rife for exploitation, 

unless something is done. And it needs to be taken very seriously, 

yes. 

Mr. PITTS. Thank you very much for your testimony. Thank you, 

Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Let me ask just a couple of final questions. Do you have any recommendations for changes in U.S. law, 

U.S. foreign policy? Again, I asked this earlier, but do you think 

we are spending enough as a country? As I asked, Lord Alton, is 

this something that the G–8—when they finally began the end of 

focus on debt, they embraced the debt issue and continue to do so. 

Is this something that the G–8 should really now make a center 

stage issue? Or have they? To the best of my knowledge they 

haven’t. 

And then finally, has there been in your view, sufficient focus on 

this by UN agencies? The Summit for Children was held just recently and I went up and spent some time at the UN. I don’t remember seeing much time, if any, devoted to the issue of the street 

children in the action plan. 

Was there information in there that is being acted upon trying 

to mobilize governments? Has the time come or has it already happened? If it happened, it was like a tree falling in a forest and nobody was around and it wasn’t heard, to the best of my knowledge. 

Perhaps a UN summit that would focus on street children. I was 

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there in 1989 when the Convention of the Rights of the Child was 

signed. I actually gave the U.S. position in support of it. We had 

some reservations about some of the provisions, but George Bush, 

41, actually signed it and I gave the presentation in New York in 

favor of it. 

And again, I note that there are some reservations if we ever do 

ratify it that would be included in it. But by and large it was, as 

Jim Grant, the head of UNICEF, said, the Magna Carta for children and yet has there been enough emphasis by the convention 

apparatus, Luis Arbor’s group, the UN Commission on Human 

Rights, do they focus enough, focus any resources on this? Do other 

UN treaty bodies focus on it the way they should? 

It seems to me that it does not get the kind of attention and mobilization focus that it deserves, but if you wanted to perhaps answer that. I wear another hat. I am the OSCE Co-Chairman, I 

have been on the Helsinki Commission now for about 2 years of my 

congressional career, 23 years. I always raise the Roma, always 

raise the issue of street children. But have we done enough at the 

OSCE, as well? The UN OSCE and other regional bodies, the OAS 

for example? Ms. Santos you may wish to speak to that. 

Has the OAS focused enough on trying to come up with durable 

solutions for street kids? 

Father CULLEN. Well, I can say the Philippine Government 

was—I testified before the UN Committee on Human Rights in Geneva in October 2003. That was the reporting—supposedly the only 

report by the Philippine Government, after 13 years under compliance, not with the UN Convention of Human Rights, and also with 

the CRC, because we presented evidence of torture of children in 

prison. And the committee then, since 2003, expected a response 

from the Philippine Government on this issue. As far as I know, 

they have not yet responded. 

And that is—that is where it is stuck. UNICEF, of course, is active in the Philippines, and to their credit they do a lot of work 

with government agencies in training and in educating them as to 

the convention and to the laws on trafficking, and so on. 

And education is going on, but the action again, sad to say, by 

practical response to the obligations under UN treaties and convention, lip service, a lot of laws, passing of laws, all of that, with implementation, very weak. Very weak. 

Ms. SANTOS. Yes, I could say the situation is the same in Brazil. 

We have signed a lot of international, make a lot of international 

commitments. But when the reports need to be presented, we 

present programs and we present several different things that 

are—does not serve the situation and the implementation of the 

policies is something that we need to do. We had very good policy 

on paper, like I said before, like he was also mentioning. But we 

need to see action. And we need a lot of investment for that. We 

need to have more interest. Because one of the things that the children’s law in Brazil did that was good was the decentralization of 

the implementation of the law. 

So it depends also on each local government to implement, and 

if we go to the northeast, a lot of places, even the society, even the 

people there, are not aware that a law for children exists. And society there, I have a friend that when she went to work in the counVerDate Mar 21 2002 12:53 Jan 18, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00131 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\AGI\091305\23435.000 HINTREL1 PsN: SHIRL
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tryside, she saw so much maltreatment of children, that she took 

one child that was almost dying of starvation, took to Manaus, to 

another city, and she was almost killed by the population of that 

town because for them, it was more important to preserve the family of the child than to preserve the child. 

So in a country where we have such law for 15 years and this, 

the society in general, still do not know it and, it is still, has not 

action really to implement it. So like I believe there need to be 

more enforcement from our government, talk more about it, bring 

more the media, really educate the people about the children’s 

rights and really implement and force the local government to do 

it, and force the local government to set up budget to help the children. 

Mr. SEXTON. Mr. Chairman, perhaps I could say that I think the 

issue of street children is being swallowed up with other issues. 

And I think HIV/AIDS is becoming the prominent issue. Now, 

street children in the research we have done, you know, 60 percent 

of the kids that we were working with at one time were HIV positive. So we can’t divorce the two. And I think Lord Alton referred 

to that earlier. 

I am not exactly sure why the United Nations doesn’t really refer 

to street children anymore. If we look at their documentation, they 

refer to all sorts of other things. They talk about education. They 

talk more about issues. And perhaps they are trying to avoid stigmatization and labels. But we can’t avoid it. We have to use some 

term somewhere. And I think right now we need to raise the profile 

of the issue of street children because of all the things we have 

talked about today. It is a global tragedy. You know, it is a crisis 

waiting to happen. 

And you know, to me it is just like a needle on a beach. You 

know, someone soon is going to step on it. So I really feel we need 

to step it up. And in terms of what the U.S. Government can do, 

your first question, I really feel it is a joke among my NGO colleagues that we don’t want USAID money. And the reason is because it is so hard to report on it. They make it so hard to get the 

money, and they make it so difficult to report on it. 

So you might have an accountant, but you need a specialized accountant just for USAID money. And we want money. And we need 

money. But we want a simple system that can—where we can report honestly about how it is used without having to go through 

the hoops that you know that it has created. So I am saying yes. 

The U.S. Government can certainly do more in funding grassroots 

projects, getting behind global strategies, getting behind strategic 

initiatives and trying to upscale those things in countries. You 

know USAID could back a global strategy, back a countrywide or 

citywide strategy, do some pilots around the world to try to and 

make this happen, back what Rede Viva is doing in Rio, to make 

these things happen. They can do stuff. They really can. 

Ms. SANTOS. One fact, also, is that they realize that to support 

homes is real expensive. So a lot of people are stopping investing 

in some homes because we have two problems: The children who 

are already on the streets and those are who are almost getting to 

be a street child. So they find out it is, in a sense, worth it to invest, we are going to be with 50,000; you can probably reach out 

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and educate 2,000 children not to go to the street. And with 50,000, 

you can help 25 children in one shelter. So the cost is very high. 

But we still need to find a way to address and to bring a solution 

for the problem that is already there and still invest in the problem 

to avoid the problem. 

Mr. SMITH. Your thoughts on whether or not a UN summit would 

be advisable on this? 

Mr. SEXTON. Well, I don’t know what other people think, but as 

long as it had some very specific outcomes, you know, we can go 

to a lot of meetings. And we can waste a lot of time, to be honest. 

So as long as some very specific outcomes came that were translated into action, yes, I think it would be a very good idea. 

Father CULLEN. One of the goals for the UN, we would ask, and 

maybe the U.S. Government can assist, is the appointment of a UN 

rapporteur for children in prison. This is one area. And then a 

rapporteur for street children and children in prison, to really go 

out there and have the authority and the profile to be able to 

present and be listened to. You know, this is the highest level we 

get to be listened to, is by yourselves, and we appreciate that very 

much. But to get a rapporteur to speak directly to the UN about 

the condition of street children and these problems, would be of 

great help. 

Mr. SMITH. I appreciate that. That is a very good idea. One 

last—I keep saying one last, but then you say something that 

prompts some additional thoughts. 

I was at the UN Human Rights Commission meeting just in 

March as I go almost every year, but I had a very interesting meeting with Manfred Nowak who is the UN Rapporteur on Torture. 

The government seems not to be responsive to other inquiries that 

have been made and in terms of its street children, the information 

clearly shows these kids are in what can only be described as a tortuous situation. 

Father CULLEN. Good point. I think we do need to get the UN 

rapporteur to come and have a look at this personally, but as far 

as I know, they have not been in contact with the Philippine scene. 

Mr. SMITH. But he needs only to be requested by a body like 

yourself or me or anyone else. That doesn’t mean he will do it, but 

it means he will take it under advisement. So it is certainly worth 

a shot. 

Father CULLEN. Good idea. 

Ms. SANTOS. And I would like to see the child abuse situation 

being addressed more. 

And the report also done in that situation because, being the second in the world, and the 10th economy, I think so is unacceptable. 

Brazil wants to become the seventh economy. How can it be, when 

Brazil does not really reinforce the law and stop it? 

So I think something more needs to be done in sex exploitation, 

child abuse, and throughout the whole country. 

Mr. SMITH. One point you made in your written testimony is that 

80 percent of those involved in the exploitation business—I assume 

you meant prostitution and/or trafficking—are the victims of incest. 

Ms. SANTOS. Yes. 

Mr. SMITH. That is a very horrible statistic in reality. 

Ms. SANTOS. Yes. 

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Mr. SMITH. Anybody else like to add anything before we conclude? 

Thank you so much for your testimonies, for your recommendations. We will pore over your written statements, and we will follow up, I assure you. And I thank you again. The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 5:30 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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