May 23
I'm in New York to meet with UNICEF's Child Protection team to discuss, among other things, the need for street children to be recognised on the boarder development agenda. I'm also here to present the research Street Action and its partners undertook in Durban, South Africa and explore potential collaboration with UNICEF in the future. I've often critiqued the larger agencies response to street children, or lack of it, but at the same time the pragmatist in me knows very well that without engagement with organisations such as UNICEF on the international level, Street Action, and its partners stand little little chance of pushing the issues from the streets onto the agenda. UNICEF's Child Protection Strategy sets out its contribution to national and international efforts to fulfil children's rights to protection and to achieve the Millennium Developments Goals by 2015. Street children remain a marginalised and forgotten group, despite their high levels of vulnerability, so this meeting tomorrow (today depending on where you are in the world at my time of writing) is an extremely important opportunity to ensure that the issue does not remain just a footnote to the broader issue of child protection.
On a personal level, I've come a long way from my first ever engagement with street children on the streets of East London in South Africa. As I gaze at the iconic skyline of New York's Manhattan and for all the power and wealth that it represents, I can't stop thinking of my first encounters with those children in East London, South Africa. Their lives and daily struggle changed, inspired and challenged me and impacted the course of the rest of my life. Its a privilege to be here in New York and in a small way I feel that I am representing those first children I first met (indeed all the street children I have met and still know). Many of them never lived to experience adulthood and fto ulfil their potential. Despite the violence, abuse and poverty on the streets what they taught me, and showed me every day, was their humanity despite the constant struggle unimaginable to most of us.
What UNICEF and those responsible for bringing about social and economic change in this world need to recognise is that children need to play a key role in bringing about transformation. As I have begun drafting the final research report to be published this summer, I came across a fantastic quote from Enew and Kruger (2003) which sums up perfectly the need for a more child centred participatory approach. This can bring about a much better understanding of a child's life on the streets. "Theories of space and time, of social agency and the deconstructionist approach of discourse analysis, have all led to acknowledgment that children are capable social agents who construct meaning and subvert power, as well as understanding that they are not ageless and genderless." Maybe that's all I should say tomorrow...
