Street Children In Latin America

The term street children were widely accepted during 1980s in Latin America and then widen out of the country like Africa and the rest of the continents (Benitez, 2011). However, the definition of street children is many and varied, depending on the orientation of the definer. That is, street children are those who have abandoned or have been abandoned by their families, schools and communities before the age of eighteen and drifted into a nomadic street life. Chetty (2001) and Barnette (2004) in Michael (2010)
Some countries have peculiar ways to appellate the phenomenon, which give clues about the country and the way they approach street children. For instance, in the UK and the USA, street children are defined as “runaways”, who leave home

First, candidates for the street sometimes called children at high risk. These are the urban poor children and at risk of being homeless and who spend time hanging out or working on the streets. Second, children on the street. This category comprises those children who work on the street during the daytime and return to their families at night; they are also known as street working children (de Benitez 2011; Panter-Brick 2002). These children spend most of their time on the street either working or hanging out with children who are already living and sleeping on the

These are some of the important factors contributing in general to the suffering of children in Ethiopia. A quarter of the population lives on less than $1.25 per day (UNDP 2011), and “87.3 percent of the population suffers multiple deprivations while an additional 6.8 percent are vulnerable to multiple deprivations” (UNDP 2013). “Almost half the population is considered undernourished, and the average life expectancy is only 48 years”. Most people living under these severe conditions are trapped in a cycle of poverty (UNDP 2011). Poverty is a major factor in this regard and accounts for close to 70 percent of the factors that cause streetism in Ethiopia. The levels of poverty is increasing in urban areas and children have no choice but to go out and look for jobs to earn enough to assist their families or themselves (FSCE2006:iii). According to (Abate 2004) Children are vulnerable to food insecurity due to their dependency status and their low social positions. They are mostly guided and supervised by adults, they cannot make their own decisions and many of them are forced to take low paying and difficult unskilled jobs to earn their daily meals, which results in many of them often living a life of abuse and