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Today In History |
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On September 9, 1904
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Boston Herald again refers to NY baseball club as Yankees, when it reports Yankees take 2, Yankee name not official till 1913
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 KHARTOUM, Nov 2005 (IRIN) - On the streets of Ombara, a camp for
internally displaced persons 10 km from the Sudanese capital Khartoum,
16-year-old Hara Mubarak sells flavoured ice for 10 Sudanese dinars (US
$0.04) to pay for her education.
"I eat only one small meal a
day, and I have only one pair of clothes to wear," explained Mubarak,
whose mother was too ill to work and whose father spent long hours
selling fruit.
Mubarak and her family moved from the town of Kassala to Ombara in
search of better opportunities in eastern Sudan. They hoped to make
enough money to afford a house, but since their arrival they had spent
their nights with relatives or on the streets.
"We have no electricity. So I have to pay a man half of what I make every day to use his freezer," Mubarak observed.
During
the day, Mubarak comes to the Child Friendly Centre (CFC) in Ombara.
The centre was set up by an NGO, the Khartoum Council for Child Welfare
(KCCW), to provide schooling, health services and counselling for the
thousands of children who after fleeing civil war and famine were
struggling to survive on the streets of the capital.
Recent
data for these children is not readily available. A study entitled
Children of the Sug (meaning "market" in Arabic), which was conducted
by Save the Children Alliance, Oxfam UK, UN Children's Fund (UNICEF),
KCCW and the Sudanese authorities in 2001, indicated that 4,000 of the
34,000 children on the streets of Khartoum and surrounding areas were
young girls, most under the age of 18.
"For a long time, the
presence of the street girls was not known, because compared to the
number of street boys there are so few and because the girls are
careful to keep themselves hidden," said Nagwan Hamid Shamseldin,
secretary-general of KCCW.
The study also reported that the
main reason the girls were working on the streets was to help their
families. Sixty-six percent indicated they were working to pay for
school fees and 63 percent to buy food.
Thirty percent said they were in Khartoum because of conflict in their regions of origin.
Shamseldin
noted that because most of the children coming to the 19 CFCs
throughout Sudan were girls: "The centres are more attractive for the
girls because they like to do handicrafts and because the girls are
more vulnerable to the dangerous conditions on the streets. They need
protection and the centres can provide them with that for a few hours
each day."
"In working throughout the years with Save the
Children and other organisations, it is becoming clear that the number
of girls on the street as well as those participating in the trade of
sex for money is increasing greatly ... It is something that needs to
be reviewed and assessed now," said Gaysar El Zein, professor of urban
sociology at Khartoum University.
According to an analysis of
children's rights published by Save the Children-Sweden in 2005, 700
babies were abandoned in Khartoum and surrounding areas in the year
2000 and the first half of 2001.
The number of girls living on
the streets was going up while the number of babies being born and
abandoned was also increasing, Shamseldin observed.
Commercial sex work
"The
street girls have fewer options for work than boys. The only thing they
can really offer in exchange for their basic needs is their body. In
the beginning they may not be keen to participate, but they quickly
learn that they have no other option," Zein said.
However, he
added, if the street girls got pregnant they could not afford to keep
their babies. They also feared legal repercussions, as it is illegal
under Islamic sharia law, which was adopted by Sudan in 1983, to give
birth outside marriage.
The Children of the Sug study found
that 80 percent of girls living on the streets supplemented their
income through commercial sex work, while 20 percent sold cigarettes,
fruits and sweets.
The analysis further indicated that 75
percent of the girls had experienced sexual abuse while living or
working on the streets and that almost all of them were sexually
active. Being sexually exploited by street boys and other men was one
of their biggest fears.
Mubarak said that street boys had harassed her on several occasions.
"Sometimes
the boys will bully you. Maybe they will try to do bad things with you.
You have to be careful of those ones," she said.
Zein noted
that to protect themselves, many of the girls would make a deal with a
street boy to exchange sex for food and protection.
Response
The
government's response to the problem has been to round them up in what
is known as kasha, a monthly campaign to rid Khartoum of people living
or working on the streets.
The children are taken off the
streets and placed in one of three institutions in the city, where they
spend some time participating in programmes to reform their attitudes
before they are let free.
Unlike the government, KCCW attempts
to reintegrate the children with their families and to set up
income-generating programmes for the families in order to avoid the
children having to work.
"We have noticed a big change in the
children who have attended counselling and participated in activities
at our centres because they begin to reach out and help other
children," Shamseldin noted.
Mubarak, who said she has never
engaged in commercial sexual activity, said the money she makes selling
flavoured ice was not enough. "I want food, clothes and to go to school
but these living conditions are just too difficult," she noted.
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