UN: International Year of Youth

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lady Morris of Bolton for giving us this opportunity to debate this subject. I declare an interest as a co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Street Children and as a trustee of one large organisation UNICEF, in common with my noble friend, and of one small charity CMAP.

In the International Year of Youth, I want to highlight a particular category of youth, which is street children. They are very hard to define because they may live on the street, or they may have a home and only go to the street sporadically, or they may live at home and work on the street. The best definition is that they are children for whom the street is the main focus and main point of reference in their lives. By itself, that brings many challenges, dangers and issues. In every country we need to face that, recognise it and resolve it. Societies in any of these countries cannot solve the issues for children but they need to solve the issues with children. What makes street children quite different is that in most countries—including, I am afraid, our own—we often try to solve issues for the children without properly allowing them to participate in the solutions.

What drives these children and young people on to the streets does not vary much from country to country. Whether the country is the UK, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia or Indonesia, some common threads run through the causes, including violence at home and the presence of alcoholic or drug-using parents, which may lead to violence. However, some things are different. In her introduction the noble Baroness mentioned war, which is a major cause, as are land seizures for one reason or another, or migration from rural to urban areas, which is an increasing phenomenon. In itself poverty does not seem to be an automatic trigger.

For the first time ever, in this International Year of Youth one day—12 April—has been devoted to street children. In the UK, that day will be led by the Consortium for Street Children, which has 60 members, including large NGOs like Save the Children, Plan UK and War Child, and many smaller ones like Toy Box, ICT or International Planned Parenthood Federation. They work away in some 130 countries. For the first time, in many of those countries this international day for street children will mark the lives of street children and will celebrate the fact that they exist and need rights. There will be street parties in Honduras, sleep-outs in Ireland and children in Morocco, Uganda, Guatemala and many other countries will highlight the day.

What in particular needs to be highlighted? The fact is that public servants and authority still really do not recognise that street children have rights like other children whose parents stand up for them. There has been some really good practice. In El Salvador, the social inclusion unit is training public servants in street child rights. In Ethiopia, there has been police training on how to deal with street children in a way that suitably recognises their rights. At the recent UN General Assembly on 24 March in Geneva, there was a very welcome resolution by the UNHCR to expand and affirm this area. So there is much good work going on. I would be grateful if the Minister would tell us which DfID policies are specifically geared to enable street children to realise their rights.