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Mohammad Khairul Alam
The phenomenon of street
children and girls has been a major concern for most areas of Dhaka city.
Thousands of street children and girls all over in Bangladesh, primarily in the
urban areas, work and live in the streets. Urban poverty, increasing
dissatisfaction with the public educational system together with the difficult
living conditions and broken families has led to a growing problem of street
children and girls. Different categories of children in especially difficult
circumstances can be identified; some of them maintain family links while
undertaking apprenticeship or street hawking to help their family survive, while
others are completely cut off from their family,
making the streets or park their home and community.
Life in the streets is hard
and unsafe, especially for a girl who, in the first place, has no business being
there - begging, selling flowers, drinking-water, chocolate or toffee, sometimes
even their bodies. Street girls are vulnerable to all sorts of risks: the
reckless motorist; the abusive police officer; the drug, crime, and prostitution
syndicates; even the bigger, older street boys who taunt or intimidate them.
Despite these, or maybe even because of these, most street girls develop both a
resistance to destruction and a capacity for positive construction. These are
the two components of resilience – the capacity to do well in spite of difficult
circumstances.
There are many teen girls
living on the streets, some are living with parents and few of along. Several
spot of Dhaka city where we can see easily, such as Kamolapur railway, Shodorgat
river port, Polashi bazaar etc. They lived in a very ill position. Sometimes we
find Floating Sex Workers (FSWs) also live with them.
Teen girls living on the
streets experience most of the same problems as FSWs and, in addition, are
frequently subjected to sexual violence. ‘Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan
Foundation’ recently reported that 70 percent of street girls have been victims
of sexual abuse, while another study by ‘LRB Foundation’ puts the figure as high
as 80 percent. One study by ‘Several Education And Polli Development
Association-SEPDA’ found that girls who turn to the streets are generally
younger than street boys. Street girls are often invisible because they do not
travel around in city at night as FSWs do, staying generally on their own or in
small family.
As mention Prof. Abdul
Quader Palash, “Street girls are seen as a socio-economy phenomenon rather then
a social category - a phenomenon created by social systems, gender rules,
political and economic”.
A 2005 survey by Rainbow
Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation on sexual activity among street girls
underscored that street girls are extremely vulnerable to sexual abuse and
sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). More than half of the boys interviewed and
more than three quarters of the girls, including 20 percent of those under
fifteen, admitted they were sexually active. Sixty-one percent of the boys said
they had forced a girl to have sex with them.
Some times street girls and
Floating sex workers are closely associated with the terminal, port and
transport industries where they find a large supply of potential clients and
customers. Terminal, Train station and port, which provides additional clients
for floating sex workers as well as street girls get enough customer for selling
something or bagging, This link diverts them for nasty-work and continuous
sexual irritation help to take fast step of them. Being obviously related,
Street girls and Floating Sex Workers (FSWs) were not regarded as complex social
phenomenon in Bangladesh. There are no monitoring and no logical studies of why
street girls gradually become FSWs in Bangladesh.
References:
LRB report `2005, UNICEF, FHI, CARE, Street children online, SEPDA research
report
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hotel, brothel, street based commercial sex workers, casual sex workers, so
called sex workers, violence, exploitation, Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan
Foundation, Mohammad Khairul Alam
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