With the breakdown of communist rule in Mongolia following the collapse of
the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the first generation of mongolian
street children was born. The police estimate that more than one thousand
children live in the streets of Ulan Bator but nobody knows the real number.
The Adress Identification Center is a state run center under the police
department, They are charged with finding street children to identify them
and return them to their families or an orphanage. The children stay at the
center for up to a week, before they are sent on. Here the police are
checking for children in a district heating hole. During winthertime when
temperatures drop as low as -45°c degrees, many street children survive by
staying in the channels of the district heating system underground.
