Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN

A boy plays with toy pistols in a slum: Post-election violence early this year forced many children into the streets in Eldoret, a town in Kenya’s Rift Valley province

ELDORET, 8 August 2008 (IRIN) - William, 11, sleeps in an alleyway between two shops in Eldoret town of Kenya’s Rift Valley Province, in constant fear of being beaten by police and other security agents.

“The thing I fear the most is being beaten,” he said. “Secondly is the fear of going without food and clothes.

“The bad thing is that we are always chased and beaten by government and municipal police,” said William, who asked IRIN not to use his real name. “Also when we sleep our things can get stolen … it’s not a safe place for us.”

As if on cue, a security guard from a nearby shop approached and hit him twice on the back with his wooden truncheon and kicked him. William and his friends scattered and after regrouping, laughed it off.

“I struggle to find food, but there’s nothing I can do about the beatings,” he said.

Kenya Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe denied claims that officers were among those who beat up the street children. “We are aware there has been an influx of street children in the town since the post-election violence but allegations that police beat up such children are false,” he told IRIN.

“When they [the children] breach the law, all we do is arrest them and hand them over to the Children’s Department.”

Influx

In January, Eldoret was one of the epicentres of the post-election violence that forced tens of thousands to flee their homes. Across Kenya, more than 1,500 people were killed and many families were split up.

As a result, Save the Children estimates the number of children living on the street in Eldoret has doubled since January 2008.

Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN

Displaced children at a camp

“We have seen a considerable rise in the number of separated and unaccompanied children as a result of the post-election violence throughout the Rift Valley,” said Charlotte Balfour-Poole, a Save the Children programme coordinator.

With the imminent closure of many of the camps for the displaced, even more children are expected to become homeless. Currently, there are over 150 unaccompanied children registered in Eldoret showground camp alone, some as young as six or seven years old.

“Most of these children risk being thrown out on to the streets,” Balfour-Poole told IRIN.

Although many children living on the streets were, like William, orphaned during the violence, a considerable number still have one or both parents. Most of the families displaced by the violence fled with nothing more than the clothes they were wearing.

Save the Children said the burden of extreme poverty was causing some parents to neglect and even abandon children as they returned to their original farmland and struggled to make ends meet.

Solvent abuse

But William and his friends are optimistic, enterprising and have a strong sense of fraternity; they work together as a barefoot, informal recycling unit.

“I have so many friends, we all look after each other,” said William. “We sell these used boxes and scrap metal which we recover from people’s rubbish to buy a little food and glue.”

Solvent abuse is ubiquitous among William and his friends. The glassy sheen of William’s wide unblinking eyes betrays his dependence on glue. Between sentences he draws heavily on a small bottle concealed beneath his grimy sweater.

“I sniff glue for two reasons,” he said. “I take it so I feel high and so I can forget.”

Although the street-children receive free healthcare at the local district hospital, these vulnerable children are not receiving adequate attention.

“Several of my friends have died from sicknesses. The small ones, most of them get pneumonia and die,” William told IRIN.

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Photo: Ann Weru/IRIN

Jean-Lambert Rukeratabaro, 16, a fourth year primary school pupil in Byumba, north of the Rwandan capital of Kigali

BYUMBA, 3 September 2008 (IRIN) - Jean-Lambert Rukeratabaro has turned 16, but is still only in the fourth year of primary school in Byumba, north of the capital, Kigali.

Like thousands of Rwandan children who lost their parents in the 1994 genocide or more recently to HIV/AIDS, Rukeratabaro is an orphan.

“I have been told that my parents died during the genocide,” he told IRIN. “Our life is hard. Our parents left us some land so when the harvest is good, we have enough food for lunch and supper.”

Rukeratabaro’s two sisters work on other farms to earn some money. “My sisters had eye and skin problems and it was very difficult getting medication,” he said.

His story is shared by thousands of Rwanda’s orphaned and vulnerable children, including those with disabilities, living on the street and those with sick parents.

“There are at least 2.8 million vulnerable children in the country,” said Gisele Rutayisire, the officer in charge of social protection and governance for child rights with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Kigali.

An estimated 100,000 Rwandan households are headed by children.

“There is a lot of vulnerability not only for children whose parents died in the genocide but also those whose parents are in prison as well as unaccompanied returnee children,” Rutayisire added.

Hundreds of thousands of children were orphaned following the 1994 genocide, according to statistics from the Ministry of Gender. Estimates for the number of children in Rwanda who are orphans or are regarded as “vulnerable” range from 1.35 million (the government) and close to three million (UNICEF).

An increasing number of children are also on the streets. “We are seeing a street children phenomenon,” Rutayisire said. UNICEF and the government are planning an assessment to determine the number of children living on the streets and their needs.

Another source of concern in Rwanda is children with disabilities, who are often kept indoors by their relatives. Rutayisire said that although efforts were being made to end this practice, more work was needed to improve such children’s access to healthcare, education and psycho-social support.

Support programmes

Jacques Murenzi, a secondary-school student from the village of Rulindo, near Kigali, told IRIN he had been taking care of his three younger brothers since 2005.

Murenzi, 15, is a beneficiary of the Community Child Mentorship Model, a programme initiated in 2001 by a local NGO, Bamporeze, to help integrate some 12,739 children into the community.

Photo: IRIN

Thousands of Rwanda’s children are orphaned and vulnerable, including those with disabilities or living on the streets

“The programme was launched following an increase in the number of orphaned children after the genocide,” Anne Muhongayire, a child rights activist with Bamporeze, said.

The children live in compounds comprising hundreds of houses where they receive training in vocational skills.

“The training and other support that we provide is essential for these children because they have missed out on the life lessons their parents would have taught them,” Muhongayire said.

However, more needed to be done. “The community should collectively take up the role of looking after these children,” she said. “This will contribute enormously towards giving them an opportunity to break out of their isolation and build their confidence.”

The number of orphans remains a challenge, according to the officer in charge of child protection at the Ministry of Gender, Alfred Karekezi. “The setting-up of orphanages is no longer a sustainable solution that can yield significant results,” he said.

“There is a need for additional funding as well as better coordination to improve the impact and sustainability of the programmes for the children,” the national office training coordinator with World Vision Rwanda, Umuganwa Assumpta, said. World Vision is helping the children access healthcare through the payment of contributions to the national mutual health scheme.

“Although there is a strong national political will and commitment to provide for a protective and supportive environment for OVC (orphans and other vulnerable children), it is becoming increasingly difficult to mobilise resources for care, protection, and support programming and to coordinate the delivery of those resources,” a report by the government of Rwanda and the OVC technical working group said. The working group comprises local ministries, UNICEF and international health NGOs.

Rukeratabaro said his dream would be to continue his education but he lacks money and relies on well wishers for support with school materials.

“Although I am not very good at school I would like to study up to university so that I can assist my family,” he said.

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Photo: Charles Akena/IRIN

Street boy Okeny hawks plastic bottles in the streets of Gulu

GULU, 10 October 2008 (IRIN) - John Kibwola, 14, braves the scorching afternoon sun as he sells his collection of plastic bottles along Acholi Street in the northern Ugandan town of Gulu.

“It is from doing this that I get something to eat,” Kibwola told IRIN. “I have been selling used plastic bottles and containers for the last two years.”

He has been hawking the bottles since he left his village of Cwero, about 65km east of Gulu town.

This was after his parents died in an attack by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) militia. “That was the end of everything and since then life has never been the same,” he said.

“I could not bear the difficult living conditions in the village, my brother is disabled and my relatives said they did not have the means to help so I decided to move to the streets.”

The streets in Gulu have more children like Kibwola, their stories often similar. The majority are also orphans, who lost their parents in the two-decade long war in the north that pitted government forces against LRA rebels.

Hawking is not the only trade for this these children - child prostitution is also common.

“We normally get our clients in the pubs mostly traders from Southern Sudan, truck drivers and people living in the town,” a 15-year old girl who declined to be named told IRIN.

She said she earns between 3,000 (US $2) and 7,000 shillings ($4.60) per day depending on the number of clients.

Images of child labour recur at most places in the town. At a local fuel station 13 young boys line up hoping to sell their plastic bottles to the incoming customers who might need them for storing kerosene.

“I collect used plastic bottles from rubbish pits in the town and then sell them,” a boy, who only identified himself as Okeny, told IRIN.

“In the morning, I fetch water for people in the town,” Okeny said, adding that he earns 200 shillings (about 13 US cents) for a 20 litre jerrican of water.

As former internally displaced persons (IDPs) continue to return to their homes, cases of children being separated from their families are on the rise thus the increase in the number of children in the streets.

Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN

Gulu children: As IDPs continue to return to their homes, cases of children being separated from their families are on the rise, leading to an increase in the number of children in the streets

Children are also being left behind in some IDP camps, exposing them to various forms of abuse, according to a recent assessment of the Lalogi IDP camp in Gulu. The assessment was conducted by the UN Children’s Fund, the NGO World Vision and the local Gulu Support the Children Organisation.

“The situation is very bad in the IDP camps… with parents leaving their children alone with no adult care giver to take care of them, we encourage parents to go with their children to the villages,” Santa Oketta, the Gulu district secretary for children affairs, said.

About 40 percent of the northern region’s IDPs, estimated at more than two million at the height of the war, have left the IDP camps for their homes or to resettlement camps closer to their original villages.

Oketta said the number of street children and child prostitutes is on the rise, adding that the number of children affected has not yet been established.

“This is a problem that requires urgent attention otherwise we are losing out a lot with young girls engaging in prostitution and others abandoning their homes for the street,” she said.

In the meantime, Okeny and Kibwola continue to struggle to make a living on the streets. “We are ready to go to school if we get somebody to help us,” they said.

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