Poverty Pushes Children onto Streets

A survey, conducted in the eastern province of Van by the Human Rights Provincial Council, showed that migration and poverty push children into the streets. Interviews conducted with 376 children, who live and work on the streets, showed most had migrated to Van from surrounding villages and provinces. The financial situation of their parents is not good and most of them have health problems.

"A Gap Between Incomes"

"There is a huge gap between incomes of different sections of the society in Van. And this affects children," said Armagan Bayraktar from the Association to Support Modern Life (CYDD), who was in the team that conducted the survey.

Bayraktar said most of the children they interviewed both continued to go to school and worked. "Being on the streets has become a way of life for these children," he said.

He added that they would try to contact the families of the children they interviewed. They are also planning to organize activities for those children.

Bayraktar said the Van governor's office and the Social Services were preparing aid packages for poor families. "But the situation requires much more complex and comprehensive measures," he said.

"Although there is no concrete evidence, I believe these children are also being molested on the streets," said Bayraktar. He said that this survey showed the situation of only the children that they could reach and added that the reality was much worse.

Tissues, weighing machines, garbage

This survey was conducted with the contributions of Social Services Directorate, National Education Directorate, CYDD, Children's Branch of the Police Headquarters and the Foundation of Education Volunteers. The survey team interviewed children for a month on the streets and made the results into a report:

* The survey was conducted among 374 boys and two girls. Eighteen of the children were aged 6 - 8 years; 97 were aged 9 - 11 years; 235 were aged 12 - 15 years and 26 were aged 16 - 18 years.

* 138 of the children working on the streets sell tissues, 107 dye shoes, 19 rent weighing machines, and one is a beggar. While six children gather garbage, 105 do other things as work.

* 34 of the children working on the streets migrated to Van from Catak, 12 from Bahcesaray, six from Gevas, 25 from Baskale, 32 from Ozalp, 12 from Caldiran, five from Ercis, 75 from Hakkari, two from Yuksekova, 74 from Gurpinar and 60 from other provinces.

* The fathers of 228 children, who participated in the survey, are unemployed. The fathers of 60 children earn less than 100 million Turkish lira (USD 70) a month. None of the children's mothers are employed. Twenty-three percent of the children surveyed have at least 10 people in their household.

* Thirteen of the 376 children working on the streets have never gone to school. 328 of them go to elementary school. Others dropped out of school after elementary education.

* 257 children work because their families need the money, 87 work to earn money for their own expenses, and 32 work because their family forces them to. 211 children said they did not like working.

* More than half of the children earn less than 2 million Turkish lira (USD 1.4) a day. Some 12.5 percent of the children working on the streets have serious health problems. 2.7 percent of them smoke. (EU/YS/EA/YE)