The Situation of Street Connected Children in Kenya
Kenya has an estimated figure of between 250,000 and 300,000 street connected children . An estimated 3,000 boys and girls spend their nights sleeping on the streets of Nairobi. As many as 60,000 further children live and work on Nairobi’s streets during the day. While it is not possible to obtain up to date and reliable data on the number of street connected children – especially girls – in Kenya, the Ministry of Planning and Devolution, Special Programmes Department now projects that available numbers could have doubled across the 47 counties, with the major cities and urban centers hosting the largest numbers. Getting numbers for street connected girls seems impossible as they are often less visible than boys. “Many girls (…) attract attention from people who take them off as house helps and into other forms of child labor. Some are married off to fellow street boys, and one needs to know their bases to appreciate the problem of girls on the streets of our towns” (RDC Evaluation 2018 – FGD with Representatives of CCIs).
There are a number of pull and push factors that lead children to end up in street situations. Pull factors include the freedom associated with life on the streets, friendships, financial independence which may appeal to some children especially those in conflict with adults. The main push factors identified by Rescue Dada Centre and recent studies , is poverty, i.e. the inability of parents to provide for basic needs, or dysfunctional families making households dangerous through use of violence, abuse and neglect. According to UNICEF in 2014, 45% of children under the age of 18, a total of 9.5 million children in Kenya, experienced child poverty.
It is often a combination of different push and pulls factors that keep children connected to the street. However, the street itself fosters further discrimination, violence and abusive behavior towards them. Sexual exploitation is a common experience of street connected children as is physical violence from security authorities, engagement in some of the worst forms of child labor, and petty crime for the purpose of gaining income for food and shelter.
Many girls in Nairobi’s slums have experienced countless social and economic challenges, and are forced into abusive relationships or situations for their own survival . They engage in risky income-generating actions, such as begging, gathering scrap metal, sifting through garbage, petty crime, or prostitution . Although all children are at risk of major harm living or working on the streets, there are certain abuses that are far more likely to affect girls. The girls have not only been at risk for childhood prostitution, but have been raped, and forced to have sex with fellow street connected boys in order to elicit protection. According to UNICEF (2011), almost half of the girls who suffered sexual abuse were molested while traveling on foot . These experiences have effects on the girl’s growth, cause emotional distress , and puts the girls at an increased risk of becoming pregnant or contracting HIV/AIDS infection, since HIV/AIDS rates in Nairobi’s slums are twice the national average and contraceptive use amongst street connected children is reportedly very low . Therefore, the girls are at a high risk of developing substance dependency in order to cope with the harsh life of the street, which can cause severe brain damage . Besides all these challenges, street connected children in the country are further disadvantaged, being left without education, healthcare and protection, in addition to facing momentous levels of discrimination and stigmatization .
