| |
 |
| |
| |
Second Place
Marcus Bleasdale Freelance / Human Rights Watch
"Todays Children - Tomorrows Leaders?"
|
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
3 of 11
|
 |
|
Preachers exorcise the evil spirits from children. Many street children are thrown out from their homes because they are blamed as being possessed by spirits. This may occur after a family member has died and economics dictate that there are too many mouths to feed. Sorcery is used therefore as an excuse.
According to estimates, Kinshasa has between 30,000 and 40,000 street children most of them unaccompanied during the day, and many of them with no home to go to at night.
Many are accused of witchcraft and pushed out onto the street. It is an indictment on the deep ugliness of poverty that displaces a parent's mind so savagely that they will seek to find a reason that is somehow a socially acceptable means of ex-communicating a child from their love and care because they can no longer afford to feed them.
Poverty is an indictment on the injustice served on millions of children every day. And war amplifies this. Children in Kinshasa have had to quickly find a way to survive on the streets. Many of them die.
Stealing, survival sex and picking food remnants from the garbage that line the streets of Kinshasa are strategies that many learn in order to survive. They move with other street kids safety in numbers - who show each other where to sleep at night. Wherever these places were, they are dangerous and the mosquitoes bring constant sickness.
|
|
|
