Whether Street Children Are Victims or Criminals

Whether street children are victims or criminals

      "Normally street children are shown in terms of the tragedy of their lives -which is true- but there`s also another dimension their wisdom, dignity, and enormous capacity for survival" by "Henning Mankell". UNICEF assessed that 100 million kids were growing up on urban streets around the world and the number is still increasing (unicef, n.d.). There are types for street children: there are those who work on the streets to get money and there are those who stay on the street all day long and go home on night and there are kids who always live on the streets without any connection to their family. Society`s look to the street children is divided into two sides whether these homeless kids are victims or criminals. It is clear that street children are victims because of poverty, violence, and child labour.

     Opponents claim that poverty is the main factor to crime between the street kids; as these kids head to crime due to their poverty by which they tend to steal or beg to be able to survive. However, these street children are victims to poverty as they do not choose to be poor; they were forced to be. Poverty forces kids to sacrifice a lot of things in their lives such as their education, childhood and many other things (ali, n.d.). In statistics made in 2007 in Nairobi, it was estimated that 400,000 children were working and living in the streets due to poverty. Overall, children should not be stereotyped as criminals due to an issue that they have no choice in it.

     Most people say that homeless children are criminals because of a violent act that they may have seen from one of them or a harassment done by them to someone in the street or that they might end up in jail due to a problem that has something to do with violence. However, many of street children who have ran away from home have been victims in one way or another to violence; either beaten or have been sexually abused. A survey made in 2000 stated that 86% of street children has been victims of violence in some stage of their lives. In another survey, it has been stated that 50% of them did suffer from sexual harassments before (unicef, n.d.).