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Second Place
Marcus Bleasdale Freelance / Human Rights Watch
"Todays Children - Tomorrows Leaders?"
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Street Kids in a centre for street children in
Kinshasa. Some facilities are available in exchange for light labour. These
consist of very basic schooling, food and lodgings. There are some centres
that have been criticised for being abusive to the children.
Summary:
According to estimates, Kinshasa has between 30,000
and 40,000 street children Æ most of them unaccompanied during the day, and
many of them with no home to go to at night.
Many are accused of witchcraft and pushed out onto the street. It is
an indictment on the deep ugliness of poverty that displaces a parent's mind
so savagely that they will seek to find a reason that is somehow a socially
acceptable means of ex-communicating a child from their love and care because
they can no longer afford to feed them.
Poverty is an indictment on the injustice served on millions of children
every day. And war amplifies this. Children in Kinshasa have had to quickly
find a way to survive on the streets. Many of them die.
Stealing,
survival sex and picking food remnants from the garbage that line the streets
of Kinshasa are strategies that many learn in order to survive. They move
with other street kids Æ safety in numbers - who show each other where to
sleep at night. Wherever these places were, they are dangerous and the
mosquitoes bring constant sickness.
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