Mkombozi Centre for Street Children

Who are “street children”?

In the ongoing debate about “who are street children and youth”, there are various definitions. These include, but are not limited to:

• Full-time street child: A child who lives, sleeps, works and eats on the streets without adult supervision and care. UNICEF defines this sort of child as a child “of” the street.
• Part-time street child: A child who comes to the street environment for part of the day, often to beg or to work as a vendor, and then returns home at night. UNICEF defines this sort of child as a child “on” the street.
• “At risk” / vulnerable child: A child who lives in poverty or is a victim of family breakdown and thus is at risk of migrating to the street (full or part-time).

Although such definitions are important for planning and monitoring purposes, Mkombozi’s work is driven at all times by the understanding that each child is an individual with a unique experiences, aspirations and needs.

How many street children are there in Tanzania?

Since the early 1990s Tanzania has witnessed a visible increase in the number of children living and working on the street. Mkombozi’s Census 2005 indicates that there are currently 470 street children in Moshi (i.e. 52 girls and 418 boys) and 876 street children in Arusha (i.e. 144 girls and 731 boys). These numbers can be broken down to reveal dramatic increases in both Municipalities since 2003:

• In Moshi, there has been a 26% increase in female and male part-time street children, a staggering 92% increase in female full-time street children, and a 60% increase in male full-time street children.
• In Arusha, there has been a 62% increase in female part-time street children, a 40% increase in male part-time street children, a 51% increase in female full-time street children, and a 39% increase in male full-time street children.

Such significant increases compound an existing problem - the numbers of full-time street children far exceed the capacity of residential care centres. For example, in Moshi there are currently three residential care centres with a combined capacity of 170 children, but there are 169 full-time children on the streets and 170 children already in care. Additionally, given the startling increase of female street children in both towns (currently totalling 52 in Moshi and 145 in Arusha), lack of care services specifically for girls is now also an urgent issue.

Importantly, when figures are analysed across age groups, the Census shows that more than 54% of street children are actually over 15 years of age. This means they are adolescents in need of social services geared toward employment, skills development, psychosocial care, and independent living, and that Government and Civil Society Organisations must look beyond residential care as the “solution” to the current street child issue. In fact, the Census indicates that the “street-based approach” currently used by Mkombozi in Arusha (i.e. focussing on family and community-based support and particularly employment opportunities) is regarded by street youth as valuable and capable of meeting their immediate needs. 

What causes children to run to the streets?

A child’s departure from home is seldom sudden, despite common conceptions to the contrary. Rather, it usually takes the form of a series of steps in which individuals find out more about the urban environment, investigate work opportunities and make contact with homeless street children. Similarly, the factor prompting departure is less commonly a single event than is often thought – rather, it is often a combination of stressors on different causal levels, as suggested in a recent ILO report:

• Immediate: the reason why a child may leave home and go to work or live on the streets could be a sudden drop in family income; loss of support from an adult family member due to illness, death or abandonment; or an episode of domestic violence.
• Underlying: chronic impoverishment, cultural expectations (such as the idea that a boy should go to work on the streets as soon as he is able), desire for consumer goods, or the lure of the city.
• Structural: factors such as development shocks, structural adjustment, regional inequalities and social exclusion.

This multiplicity of levels means that few children are able to perceive all the circumstances that contributed to their decision to leave home. The reasons given by a child on the day of leaving home may anyway be quite different to those they offer three months later after s/he has rationalised his/her home situation and their actions.

What causes children to run to the streets in Tanzania?

Mkombozi's research on child vulnerability in Kilimanjaro Region has shown how income poverty increases familial pressures, which can in turn result in frustration, domestic violence and alcoholism. This, in turn, exacerbates income and non-income poverty within the family. It is this cycle of poverty in its widest sense that serves to exclude families and children from traditional social support networks, and ultimately pushes children and youth to migrate from their homes to urban centres.

Specifically, community members (participating in research conducted by Mkombozi) explain that income poverty is caused by a lack of education and opportunities. Prevailing social attitudes to women and the poor exacerbate this poverty and cause frustration and anger, which in many cases manifests in alcoholism. This then exacerbates income poverty, but also increases dysfunction by catalyzing domestic violence, corporal punishment and abuse within the home environment.

Within Kilimanjaro Region there is also a creeping insinuation that poverty is caused by a deficit within the family concerned (i.e. that they are somehow to blame for it). This is causing impatience and less tolerance amongst teachers, school committees and community members for the consequence of poverty amongst children and a further marginalisation of poor children and their families from traditional support mechanisms within the community. For many poor families and children the only resort to escape such a vicious cycle is to leave the community and to migrate to the streets.

Thus, it must be understood that the reasons children migrate to the streets in Tanzania include immediate, underlying and structural factors:

• Immediate causation: Mkombozi’s Participatory Action Research (PAR) in Kilimanjaro Region has identified that the immediate causation of street children is conflict. It is a factor within the home environment that frequently pushes children to run away and is endemic in their lives on the streets.
• Underlying causation: In Kilimanjaro Region, underlying factors include:
  – The impact of rural poverty on the family unit, marked increasingly by fathers leaving the family home to look for work and subsequent deepening of familial poverty.
  – The breakdown of familial relationships, marked increasingly by single parenthood, children birthed out of marriage, and death of parents and caregivers.
  – The breakdown of extended family relationships in urban settings, marked increasingly by single parents engaging in “risky behaviours” (e.g. alcoholism, prostitution) and/or working unsuccessfully to try to make ends meet, but leaving children unsupervised during the day.
  – The influx of urban migration, marked increasingly by a growth in “squatter” or “slum” settlements that are characterised by severe overcrowding, ill-health, poverty and violence.
• Structural causation: In Kilimanjaro Region, structural factors include a rapid population increase, an unresponsive employment market, an under resourced educational system, and increased pressures on peasants and increasingly uneconomic smallholdings in the rural sector.

What is life like on the streets?

Boys and girls who live and work on the streets are vulnerable to wide and extreme violations of their rights. They have difficulties accessing basic services and are verbally, physically and sexually abused. Few trust adults. Many perpetuate abuse on their weaker peers. Although these boys and girls may have a range of skills related to survival and informal income generation, these strengths remain unarticulated and unrecognised by mainstream society. This combined with the fact that few of them have benefited from sustained formal education means that these children generally find it very difficult to earn money legally. Faced with this situation, many are forced into crime and confrontation with the general public. Significant numbers of these boys and girls seek temporary relief from their situation through substance abuse. They become trapped in a cycle of poverty, violence and abuse. They are socially excluded, highly visible, mobile and increasing in number. They are unable to access basic services - including school - which generates further problems and demands on already overstretched social services and the criminal justice system. As these children age, they run increasing risk of HIV/AIDS and conflict with the law.

Related Mkombozi publications:

• Census 2005: A comparative analysis of Tanzania’s vulnerable children (PDF 4.1mb)
• Police round-ups of street children in Arusha are unjust and unconstitutional (PDF 357kb)
• Why do children migrate to the streets in Tanzania? (PDF 1.2mb)
• Mkombozi seeks alternatives to residential care (PDF 55kb)
• Street children in Tanzania: A profile and call for action (PPT 121kb)

Related (external) websites/resources:

• The Consortium for Street Children Virtual Library
• Child Rights Information Network
• Human Rights Watch: Street Children
• UNICEF: The State of the World’s Children 2006 (Street Children)
• Street Child Africa