While it is widely recognised that Pakistan has the second largest population of out-of-school children, the social problem of children on the streets is much less recognised. Against an estimated 22.8 million out-of-school children aged between 5-16, there were 1.5 million street children in Pakistan in 2014.

The fact that the most recent statistics about the street children in Pakistan are six years old reflects on the importance assigned to the social menace. There is reason to believe that the Covid-19 pandemic and the negative trend in most of the macroeconomic indicators of Pakistan’s economy including the rising unemployment, a massive increase in the cost of necessities and utility services, may have pushed this figure significantly higher.

In addition to the abysmally low public interest in street children, a lot of myths surround them. A long list of the terminology reserved for street children, including “street children,” “children on the street,” “children of the street,” “runaway children,” “children living and/ or working on the street,” and “homeless children” highlights the fact that street children experience widely different types of life circumstances.

The street children have been best defined as “the children who depend on the streets to live and/or work, whether alone, with peers or with family; and a wider population of children who have formed strong connections with public spaces and for whom the street plays a vital role in their everyday lives and identities.” Alternatively, they include “any girl or boy who has not reached adulthood, for whom the street (in the broadest sense of the word, including unoccupied dwellings, wastelands, etc) has become her or his habitual abode and/ or sources of livelihood, and who is inadequately protected, supervised or directed by responsible adults” (Inter-NGO, 1985).

Contrary to general belief, street children are not a homogenous group. Street children’s characteristics are diverse in terms of age, sex, ethnicity, indigenous identity, nationality, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity/ expression. This diversity implies different experiences, risks and needs. The nature and time spent physically on the street vary significantly from child to child, as does the nature and extent of relationships with peers, family members, community members, civil society actors and public authorities.

Street children engage in a range of activities in public spaces, including work, socialisation, recreation/leisure, shelter, sleeping, cooking, washing, and engaging in substance abuse or sexual activity. Children may engage in such activities voluntarily, through lack of viable choices, or through coercion or force by other children or adults. Children may conduct these activities alone or in the company of family members, friends, acquaintances, gang members, or exploitative peers, older children, and/ or adults.

On the face of it, the presence of children on the streets indicates something deeply problematic with the family structure and socio-economic conditions. The safety of the street children needs to be seen in some of the recent developments in Pakistan. Pakistan has recently witnessed a tragic increase in the incidents of child abuse. In many cases, child abuse was followed by the murder of the child. This has made parents and elders in the household deeply concerned about the safety of the children. As parents harbour unprecedented concerns about the safety of their children, an increasing number of street children indicates that there must be some unavoidable reasons that force the parents to tolerate their children’s absence from home and presence on the streets.

Why are such a large number of children on the streets? Some of the reported reasons include a household’s socio-economic vulnerability, especially the father’s. When a father is poor, sick, or a drug addict, he cannot get gainful employment. Consequently, household poverty becomes a vicious circle, where different factors interact to drive children on the streets.

The out-of-school children are at a higher risk of ending up on the streets. They are also at a greater risk of becoming street children when both parents have a job. Women in poor households who work as domestic servants remain away from home. At the same time, the father has gone to work. In this situation, the odds of a child ending up on the street are high.

Much of the change in attitude and unprecedented concern about the safety of children is a direct result of broad demographic changes. Previously, one would rarely see parents feeling alarmed regarding a child’s safety because the child was considered safe in the extended family, where elders and other relatives would take care of all the children. Globalisation, among other factors, has led to an increasing trend of nuclear families. With no extended family and limited kinship relationships in urban households to fall back on in difficult times, becoming a street child is highly probable.

A high dependency ratio also significantly contributes to the rise in the number of street children. Often when the number of children in a poor household is high, the older children are forced into child labour. Most of the child labourers start working as an apprentice. Violence against child labourers at the workplace is regarded as one of the most critical factors behind the children taking to the streets. Where both the parents have to go for work, chances are high that the child would end up on the street out of fear of violence at the workplace. Broken and fractured families with frequent episodes of spousal violence are another critical risk factor for a child ending up on the streets.

Many of the risk factors for dropping out of school are also relevant in the case of street children. For example, the likelihood of becoming a street child is very high if the school is too far or unavailable or if the child is not interested in studies. It is no secret that rote learning and education in the English medium have forced many students out of school, ultimately ending up on the streets.

Once on the streets, these children are at a greater risk of being drawn into abuse situations, such as child labour, exploitation, trafficking and arbitrary arrest. They are at a significantly increased risk of sexual abuse by peers, older street children and adults. Additionally, they join the subculture characterised by substance use. Once children become addicts, they are highly likely to enter the world of crime because substance use is impossible unless one has sufficient economic means. So the substance use is almost invariably followed by criminal activities.

Since Pakistan does not have an effective juvenile judicial system, the children at the wrong end of the law might end up in jails and face further exploitation. Given the scant government attention to street children, there is very little chance of rehabilitating such children.

The vulnerability of such children was gruesomely highlighted in December 1999 in Pakistan, when a man was convicted of the murder of one hundred children in Lahore.

The public policy sees the problem of street children from a paternalistic end and tries to remove children from the streets. In some other contexts, governments see street children from the perspective of human rights, respect the “choice” and give them the wherewithal related to the rights, such as the right to life and dignity. One wonders how the state sees such children in Pakistan. It is apparently too occupied with other things to take care of street children.

The writer is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at COMSATS University Islamabad,

Lahore Campus