Children on the Move, Children on the Streets

Daniela Reale

Exploited Children Adviser

SC UK

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Why are we focussing on Children on the Move?• Mobility is one of the defining issues of the 21st century• Million of children are on the move, both within and between countries.

Because of globalisation, urbanisation conflict, state failure, natural disasters, climate change

• Feedback from our programmes that ‘children on the move’ are especially vulnerable to the worst forms of exploitation.

• They are the hardest to reach and their mobility complicates child protection interventions.

• Analysis of global child exploitation policies and trends highlights lack of focus on children who move and how the mobility contributes to protection issues faced by these children.

• Children’s movement falls in between larger debates e.g. trafficking, migration, child labour. Full extent and diversity of children’s movement not considered.They either neglect children’s agency in initiating and adapting to movement or focus on adults’ migration with children’s perspective and experiences often ignored;

• Fragmented protection policies fail these children in particular.• Scarce attention to procedures that ensure that decisions about separated

and unaccompanied children other than children seeking refugee status take each individual child’s best interests into account.

• An increasingly common understanding with other agencies and donors working on this issue of the need to look beyond the current limitations in approaches.

Children on the Move. SC’s definition• ‘Those Children moving for a variety of reasons,

voluntarily or involuntarily, within or between countries, with or without their parents or other primary caregivers, and whose movement might place them at risk (or at an increased risk) of inadequate care, economic or sexual exploitation, abuse, neglect and violence.’

• An umbrella definition which brings together different categories of children and which aims to highlight their common protection needs. It includes: trafficked children; children who migrate (e.g. to pursue better life opportunities, look for work or education or to escape exploitative or abusive situations at home); children displaced by conflict and natural disasters; and children living/working on the street.

• Included in the definition both children who move with their families and children who move alone, the latter being potentially the most exposed to risk.

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Street Children a ‘mobile population of children’• Many children who live or work on the street are on the move.

The reasons are diverse and include voluntary and involuntary movement in search of work , education, to escape poverty, conflict, a humanitarian crisis or abuse and violence at home.

• They move between different places and over time• Mobility for street children can be between rural areas and the city,

between areas in the city and between street and non-street life (street/family/institutions)

• As for other children who are ‘on the move’ , Street Children’s mobility is multifaceted and complex

• Mobility can be a coping strategy for survival, one of the many strategies for some young people to develop their identity; part of a livelihood strategy which might or might not involve their families in the decision to move.

• Movement makes them vulnerable (WFCL, abuse, exploitation) and face discrimination. However, their mobility has in some cases shown how children develop innovative coping behaviours, exercise agency and develop key networks

• But movement is not always negative (if not forced and they receive adequate support)

• In some cases children’s mobility is perceived by children as a temporary stage, between a difficult or not desirable life at home and accessing training or better employment opportunities.

• All this is common to most children on the move.

What children on the move tell us

• Causes of Movement: • Looking for work• Access education• Escape poverty• Escape abuse and domestic violence or violence in school• Orphanhood or escaping emergencies• Escape discrimination • Access consumer goods• Gain status

Risks (and benefits)• Unsafe migration• Abuse and exploitation• Discrimination • Lack of access to basic services• Use of institutional care to respond to their needs (can expose the child to further violence,

abuse, neglect and exploitation).• BUT it can also bring opportunities! Some children tell us they are prepared to face a period of

hardship to improve their life chances or those of their families.

Looking at street children through the CoM lens

• Looking at street children through this lens means that the complex mobility patterns of street children can be understood and an adequate system of protection mechanisms can be put in place as a part of a system approach that protects all children who are mobile and capitalises on their similar needs and causes for movement and coordinates responses and initiatives.

• Through listening to street children’'s voices and eliciting their experiences, this approach can helps us find a balanced response in policy and practice which places in the same picture agency and constraint as well as resilience and exploitation and abuse.

• Targeted initiatives are genuinely targeted i.e. they are not just compartmentalised responses and do not ‘crowd out’ the needs and adequate responses to protect most children on the move.

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Save the Children’s Approach: Building Protection Systems for children on the move• Protection System: a set of law,

policies, regulations and services addressing prevention and responses that address all forms of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of children.

• Protection systems for CoM require strengthening of such systems in places of origin, transit and destination, i.e. coordination between organisations/agencies in more than one place. (E.g. remove bureaucratic obstacles to access to social protection measures in different local authorities; inter-agency focal points in different local authorities/countries; bilateral/multilateral agreements).

• Various factors discourage such coordination

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Child protection systems need to be adapted to work for children on the move, including street connected children.

This means:• Protection Techniques Delivered at Different Times: Before they leave

home; while in transit; to keep in touch with friends and relatives and others concerned about their welfare; specialised interventions for when they arrive at destination and they develop street connections (Prevention from exploitation, violence, abuse and worst forms of child labour).

• Protection techniques that aim to enhance the capacity of individual children to protect themselves and to organise themselves to protect each other; to enable families to protect their children more effectively (at home and away); focussing on communities as a whole (at home and away)

• Support for safer movement• Identification of exploited and abused children• Provision of accessible, appropriate and relevant services, such as

education, health, job counselling and training.• Children’s participation• Policy and legal change

A protection System for CoM

Preventing street connectedness

• Prevent multiple deprivations• As per most children on the move it is not about preventing movement per se but

the vulnerability to the worst forms of movement AND increasing children’s options to access services and realise their rights

– Linking protection with anti-poverty strategies: e.g. livelihoods; child-focussed social protection measures; youth employment.

– Tackling domestic violence and abuse (e.g SC training of communities; health and education professionals; peer support groups key)

– Address issues linked to orphanhood, including access to assets and inheritance rights; supporting families and children in their families and appropriate care alternatives)

– Safe migration interventions: practical information not just a list of risks! (e.g. on labour laws and regulations, how to access services; basic financial training. Information to be accessible. Good advice from adults is key for street children

– Local communities empowered and enabled to protect children (origin, transit and destination). E.g. child protection networks and children’s groups. Monitoring role and protective role for children migrating. SC research shows importance of appropriate training of community mechanisms. Approach currently adopted by SC in SEA

Protection Systems for CoM

• Protecting children in Transit:– Biggest challenge– Fear of being intercepted might drive children into

more hidden routes: important that the message is that interventions are not exclusively aimed at stopping children but at protecting them from harm!

– Building capacity of law enforcement personnel crucial (do no harm as a minimum)

– Building capacity of social workers et al. crucial.– Distinguishing protective intermediaries and traffickers– Understanding and Strengthening local protection

networks

Protection Systems for CoM

• Ensuring better conditions at destination and specialised interventions for street connected children

– Child protection services are harmonised and inclusive strategise are developed to protect all children on the move

– All CoM have access to multidisciplinary national referral systems, case management and tracking systems are fully guaranteed. Case management and data management systems are coordinated.

– Child labour responses that are tailored to the needs of children on the move and reflect differences in age and gender.

– Providing safe spaces and shelters and family-based long-term care– Strengthening children’s social networks (e.g MAEJT)– Ensuring that the right to access services is guaranteed for CoM and that

services are adequate to incoming children and youth.– Removing barriers to accessing education (location; cost; transport; language;

combining work with education) and improving retention– Good advice from adult figures– Reducing some of the effects of street life (e.g post traumatic stress; addiction;

general health; sexual behaviour; school access/problems)– Best Interest Determination. States must identify durable solutions for children

on the move, which might include integration into the destination area, return, or transfer to a different location. Durable solutions must be identified on an individual basis for each child and the best interests of the child should be the primary consideration.

– Participative approach

Key challenges

• Building and sustained funding for child protection systems for CoM• Participation of beneficiaries. Too many policies and interventions fail to reach the

children they are aimed at. Need to take into account their voices, and differences in terms of gender, age, ethnicity.

• Targeted interventions need to take into account multiple deprivations of street children and consider the implications in terms of resources and capacity of key professionals.

• Targeted initiative should not ‘crowd out’ initiatives that aim at the protection of larger groups of marginalised children, rather coordinate initiatives.

• Explore common experiences and needs of street children and others considered mobile to identify common elements and key targeted responses.

• Explore how informal networks on which street children rely or might be able to rely can become part of a protection system (particularly relationship with adults/families/carers before and after they move)

• (re)integration. Sending children back to birth families measures does not always respond to the realities of these children, their families and their communities. The importance of BID and long term solutions.

• Urban policies will need to take into account the protection of mobile children and the specific needs of those mobile children who are likely to create a special connectness with the streets. However, there might be different urban agendas that do not take the rights of children on the move into account.

• Conflicting policies (migration, child protection, urban policies; child labour) do not protect these children.

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Conclusions and Recommendations for Policy Change

– National and regional legistalations and policies to protect children on the move should be adopted and the existing ones on child protection, migration, trafficking should be harmonised to ensure coherent responses based on best interest of the child

– Best interest of the child, non-discrimination and participation survival and development should be at the basis of policies and programmes aimed at protecting children on the move

– Coordination and collaboration within and across key ministerial departments and sectors (e.g. welfare, health, education, labour, justice, migration) and between geographical areas to protect CoM and identify durable solutions.

– Children should not be criminalised because of their migration status. The protection of the child needs to be applied irrespective of their migration status

– Work to promote acceptance of children’s mobility and their entitlement to care and protection

– Long-term commitment from government to building family support services and family based alternative care and to tackling the misuse of residential care in line with the Guidelines.

– Donors to support preventative community and family support and family-based care.– Prevention and information aimed not at limiting movement but offering choices and

opportunities– Protection of child rights when children are in transit– Identify durable solutions for the protection of children which might include return, when this

is the best interest of the child or settlement in host or third country. Those who move across borders should not be deported and their return should only be considered as one of possible options.

– Eliminate discriminatory policies that deny migrant children access to basic services.– Tackle issues linked with stateliness

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Thank you for listening

Daniela Reale, Exploited Children Adviser, Save the Children UKEmail: d.reale@savethechildren.org.uk