Newletter 23 ENG

"Kids living in the streets and sewers"

An uncertain future of the forgotten childhood; The root of the problems.

Picture Source: Google, "Street Children"

Life for millions of Boys and Girls living alone in the Streets, the sewers of the cities or being farm laborers is far from being Happy, having the need to work in the worst human conditions due to the heartbreaking poverty, victims of the effects of chronic hunger, fleeing from sexual violence and physical abuse, from the dissolution of their families as well as the indifference of the people around them thinking that they have an adult who corrupts them aside or engages in illicit activities, when most of the time they are children who are really alone, starving and looking in the street for something to eat and the way to survive day by day, which leads to Social Isolation; children who during their life will not know a home in which to enjoy their childhood and even many of them will not even know a hospital or basic health services growing up to adulthood and those who survive violence and disease will be men and women outside the system, abandoned where organized crime and other illicit activities will find in this population reserve the perfect disposable recruits for their army; This situation is repeated year after year in various countries of the world, especially in those with poor economies, corrupt systems or insufficient policies for the adequate development of minors, which is described in this research article.

The daily life of Street Children

Money. The activities that these minors carry out to earn money to survive on the streets are: Sale of sweets, request for money in the street in cruise ships and main roads, prostitution and crime, in addition many children are messengers of criminals to transport small doses of illegal drugs, which are paid for with a candy and some paint solvent to inhale or marijuana.

Dangers and a negative circle of corruption. These children living on the streets never know when they will be awakened by an adult on the street to physically or emotionally violate them and even use them for child prostitution activities, in addition to the corrupt policemen and politicians who take their money and due to the lack of structure of governments to social reintegration, these children are removed from the place where they sleep to imprison them which is the best option that governments have to this problem and after a few days return them to the streets to starve and also with a bad criminal record due to destitution, vagrancy, or a minor crime invented by these corrupt authorities to make them again victims of the adults who will corrupt them again in the streets, turning them into a permanent negative circle until the children loses their life due to illness or violence, even in a fight of criminal gangs casual or directed to kill children who are easy targets for night offenders.

Kidnapping, exploitation and trafficking of minors in Illegal Activities. Case in Mexico of Children Rented by poor women called "Marias" to beg for money in the streets.

In Mexico, children who are separated from their families due to Organized Crime Violence, migratory mobility, high marginalization, and poverty or criminal activities, are mostly NOT recovered by the authorities, since there are no complete records of all infants because health is not free and there are births outside the economic system, of mothers who do not have medical insurance named “Popular Insurance or INSABI” , and there are no Identifications to minors that register the name of the parents linking the fingerprints of the minor using the databases of the INE (National Electoral Institute) with facial recognition, nor controls for the transfer of minors in the country, so organized crime freely transports minors in private vehicles who are often the product of kidnapping and even take buses and national private transport without an authority registering them on the roads, bus stations, airport coughs or seaports in the country. There are large investments in facial recognition technology for espionage purposes used by governments and political figures against their enemies, but there is not for the identification of children from the registration of their birth to avoid kidnapping, transfer and trafficking children for organized crime.

Many times, when we walk through the streets of Mexico it is common to see these adult women called "Marias" with children in their arms, many of them are babies a few months old and others under three years and they are "always asleep", we think it happens due to poor nutrition or the fatigue of the minors who accompany them, when the reality is that these little ones are under the effect of some drug such as chloroform or heroin, many of them make drunk by force so that they fall asleep.

How to help a Street Child or a "Maria" Lady properly?

The World Health Organization refers that it is preventable if instead of giving money to these children and ladies, they are given food, medicines, clothes, and things that are useful for their daily life such as shoes, soap, or things that they can exchange for goods, and thus avoid strengthening the crime networks that surround the circumstances of children in the absence of government structures to provide free food, health, education or shelter to these minors or their families.

Cuba in LATAM is a case of success in respecting and promoting the rights of children.

In Cuba, seeing a child asking for money or living in the streets, it´s impossible because their parents can go to prison if their children´s do not attend school and are not properly cared for by them during their childhood. Despite the historical economic embargo from the U.S. to Cuba, this country has guarantee the adequate development and well-being of ALL children in the island, allowing them to live their childhood enjoying full rights, once the government of Cuba takes control of children Education from the age of 3 when they start their kindergarten until they are 17 years old before reaching the age of majority as MANDATORY throughout the country and afterward it gives them the possibility of studying a degree or postgraduate degree for FREE with the educational materials and food included in all levels, with access also to health and the necessary medications or surgical procedures in addition to access to public safety, sewage, electricity, housing, and what the state can provide in addition to a small basic monthly food basket throughout their life.

But the countries in the world have other priorities such as amassing the fortunes of the great rich and the political leaders and attending to them in all their requirements and their needs, the large corporations dominate political decisions so the governments of the countries maintain themselves with superficial policies for the care of work and child labor exploitation without the intention of investing more time, money, education, technology, health, or infrastructure to this important issue of social development and in times when education privileges those who have the most money, society, in general, is insensitive to the issue, maintaining serious prejudices about these minors and negative thoughts due to their bad appearance, avoiding them instead of offering help as a substitute element to the "Government Absent”, but not seeing the poverty or inequality economic situation as that is the origin of all this problem, it seems paradoxically for all this misunderstanding of the problem and the lack of willingness to help in some years after the COVID 19 pandemic; due to the increasing international crisis, it will be very common to see many more children´s living in the streets probably the result of being kidnapped for children exploitation, or a poor dysfunctional family origin, feeding on dump and living under the sewers of drains, foreseeing a very difficult economic and social situation for everyone countries and their governments in the following years; but also in an invitation to know the best international experiences to follow in the footsteps of countries that are concerned about taking care of the well-being of children internationally.

Written and Reviewed by the Economists Imelda Narvaez Alcantara and Rosa Maria Banda Martínez