Jessica Maw, October 23rd 2008, 9:50pm
The orphans in Uganda have found working on the streets a result from becoming orphaned when they lost their parents in the two-decade long war in the north that pitted government forces against LRA rebels. These children are now finding work in such places as Gulu hawking and even child prostitution.
Children work as child prostitutes who earn between 3,000 (US $2) and 7,000 shillings ($4.60) per day depending on the number of clients. Also children work at the local fuel station trying to sell their plastic bottles to people who may need them to store more kerosene. Children also earn money through collecting fresh water in the mornings for people.
Internally Displaced Person’s (IDP) continue to return to their homes while cases of children being separated from their families is on the rise which results in these children then turning to working on the streets. About 40 percent of the northern region's IDPs, estimated at more than two million at the height of the war, have left the IDP camps for their homes or to resettlement camps closer to their original villages.
These actions have results for the children of the future as these children end up on the street and those turning to child prostitution have the added risk of not surviving which increases the number of deaths among children. A better life for these children needs to be found. Working the streets can not become the rest of their life.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=80845
1 comment:
It is terrible that these children have been reduced to such means. To them working on the streets is their only means of survival, and with the prevalence of AIDS and other diseases, the chances of survival are slim. Every individual should experience childhood; Although their state has been induced, it gives these children little to look forward to.
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