ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my greatest gratitude to the people who have helped & supported me throughout my project. I am grateful to my teacher for her continuous support for the project, from initial advice & contacts in the early stages. A special thank of mine goes to my parents who helped me in completing the project & my mom exchanged her interesting ideas, thoughts & made this project easy and accurate. At last but not the least I want to thank my friends who appreciated me for my work and motivated me and finally to God who made all the things possible.

I want to dedicate this project to all those children living on the

streets of this world.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Street children are a complex challenge to our society. These children are at a high risk of physical and physiological problems. My report has identified the issues and concern specific to this group of individuals who need our immediate help and attention. Approximately 1151 children are living on the streets in ten different cities where maximum concentrations of street children are reported by newspaper. Children were found to involve in all wrong doings. They are involved in drug addiction. Their primary source of income was scavenging garbage. These children are of different nationalities. Children are regularly abused physically and mentally, their partners are both males and females. During intercourse their partners or they themselves take no precautionary measures. This leads to diseases among them. An overall 71% of the children dont know of any protective measure to protect against HIV/AIDS. Cigarette smoking is common on their use. The use of Hashish was found to be extremely prevalent among this group. They sniff bond as well. While injection drug use was not reported by any of the children I interviewed, although the children reported using heroin.

INTRODUCTION
Street children are a term used to refer to children who live on the streets of a city. They are basically deprived of family care and protection. Most children on the streets are between the ages of about 5 and 17 years old, and their population between different cities is varied. Street children have been a distinct social underclass which has stayed neglected by the World for a fairly long period of time. The issue of street children remained dormant until 1996 when UN officially short listed this issue as one of the major social anomalies our World is being faced up with today. Data on street children Estimates an approximate number of 40 million street children in South America, 25 million in Asia, 10 million in Africa and approximately 25 million in Eastern and Western Europe. While the largest concentrations of street children are reported in Latin and SouthAmerica2, South Asia is home to some of the largest numbers of street children in the world3. Transition from family life to street life is neither sudden nor easy, but instead is a process that takes place over an extended period of time. Street children learn to cope with street life very quickly. HIV/AIDS used to be regarded as a global epidemic that affected only adults, but today we know that millions of children and youth have also been affected by the HIV/AIDS crisis, either because they have been infected themselves or because someone close to them has. Although every child who works or lives in the street is exposed to a considerable amount of risk; the risk is compounded in the absence of a family support. In such situation, children are often forced into survival sex, i.e. sex for protection, food, drugs and shelter. Positive relationships with parents, teachers and other adults in the

Community has found to act as "protective factors" that help young people reduce high-risk behavior such as using drugs or having unprotected sex.. These children use tobacco, smoke cigarettes, other drugs like hashish, opium and heroin are in common use among them.

ORIGIN OF STREET CHILDREN

The phenomenon of street children has been documented as far back as 1848. In 1848 Lord Ashley referred to more than 30,000 'naked, filthy, roaming lawless and deserted children', in and around London. By 1922 there were at least 7 million homeless children in Russia as a result of nearly a decade of devastation from World War I and the Russian Civil War. Abandoned children formed gangs, created their own argot, and engaged in petty theft and prostitution.

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
79% of the study population was Pakistani children, followed by Afghani (10%), Bengali (08%) and Burmese (03%).Karachi had the largest proportion of non Pakistani children, where children with different nationalities were seen. Children from different national backgrounds were also seen in Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta, Rawalpindi and Hyderabad. Political situation in Afghanistan led to the displacement of a high number of Afghani people who took refuge in Pakistan. The high proportion of Afghani children in Peshawar, Quetta and Rawalpindi could be attributed to this very situation and the numbers might be different at another stage.

CURRENT CASES
A Case from dawn newspaper has been taken.
Children sexually abuse on Pakistani streets KARACHI: Nadeem knows first hand the misery of life on the streets. Sexually assaulted as a child, he became a pimp of young boys the only way he knew how to survive as a member of Pakistans underclass. He says he was 12 years old when he was attacked. Since then, he has been dragged into a vicious cycle of horrifying abuse allegedly aided and abetted by police and which few are willing to confront in the Muslim country. It was just the third night I slept on a street when a policeman picked me up and did bad things to me. I cried a lot but no one came to help me, Nadeem, now 17, told AFP. He was sexually assaulted for a second time by the leader of a street gang, who then forced Nadeem to join the 17 other children in his gang. By 14 he was a full-time sex worker. His pimp gave him a mobile phone to keep in contact with clients. According to charities which work to protect street children in Pakistan, up to 90 per cent are sexually abused on the first night that they sleep rough and 60 per cent accuse police of sexually abusing them. Children on the street are beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted, and sometimes killed, said Rana Asif Habib, head of the Initiator Human Development Foundation (IHDF). Police (should) protect people. When policemen are themselves involved in molesting children, who will protect them? he asks. What we have gathered in our research is that policemen make up more than 60 per cent of those who physically torment, sexually harass street children,said Anwer Kazmi of the Edhi Foundation, the countrys largest charity. Karachi is home to Pakistans biggest community of street children tens of thousands of victims of domestic violence and broken homes, drugs and crime, in the steamy port city. More than 170,000 street children live on the streets across the country. Illiterate, uneducated and most without family, the children can grow into seasoned criminals, drug addicts or fall prey to militancy.

When Nadeem turned 16, he tried to escape. He received counselling from a charity and was taught photography. He tried to make it his profession. I was happy with my work, but a year ago, a policeman put me in the lockup on a false charge, confiscated my camera and abused me sexually, he said. The experience turned him against the world. I decided to become stronger. Now I have my own gang and many influential people are my clients. No one can touch me now.Nadeem says he acts as a pimp to 10 teenage sex workers aged 14-18, taking a sizeable cut of whatever the boys in earn. Half an hour after finishing with one client I get another call and I forget all about wanting a respectable life. Nadeem lives on a street in the downtown Saddar neighbourhood, but rents a room in a cheap hotel when he has surplus cash. He confesses that he too sexually assaulted a child. He insulted me and my family so I told him he had it coming. So I grabbed him and gave it to him. I still remember that night. I havent done that to anyone else since then and I dont want to. Rizwan is a fishermans son. He insists he is 12, but he looks much younger. He left home three years ago because his family beat him and says he was abused by police. IHDF fears he too will be dragged into the sex industry. The police tried to make me do bad things six or seven times but I managed to get away, he said. But one day, one policeman took me by force, put a cloth over my mouth and took me to a place where he did bad things. Shaukat Hussain, head of police in Karachis southern district where many street children live, said any officers found guilty would be punished, but denied the force was anything like as culpable as reported. There are black sheep in our department who are involved in such acts. But we punish anyone whose crime comes to surface and is proved, he told AFP. The number of policemen who are involved in such acts is far less than what is being claimed by the media and NGOs, he added. Pakistan offers little protection to vulnerable children. A draft bill for child protection has been pending with the interior ministry for two years, a senior official of the human rights ministry told AFP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to talk to the media. The bill is designed to tighten the laws protecting children, bringing them in line with international conventions, doing more to help children in difficulty and bringing police and other offenders to book for abusing minors.

There is a visible lack of interest on the part of the government on this issue despite our constant pursuits, said the ministry official. One former police official told AFP that he organized seminars to sensitize police on how to treat street children four years ago, but that the programme was abruptly abandoned when he retired.

ANALYSIS
I have been observing street children since this project was given to me. These innocent children live very tough life. They dont care about their hygiene; they are exposed to various social evils like child physical, mental and sexual abuse, drug addiction, bond sniffing and so on. Reasons for which they leave their homes is physical violence by their parents, poverty, peer pressure, wanted freedom, didnt want to go to school. While I was observing them I found very interesting thing that they dont live alone on streets but they live in groups. These groups are controlled by a leader, who is elder, the strongest boy or the one who owns that place. Their sleeping place at night is footpaths or parks. Their primary source of income is scavenging garbage. High proportions (88%) of children reported a lifetime prevalence of experiencing a sexual Intercourse. 83% of the children were found to be sexually active. Children were inquired whether they had been raped or sexually assaulted while living on the street. A fairly high proportion of children admitted that they had been raped (76%) while living on the streets. Children were found to have both female and male sexual partners. Most of them take no precautionary measures e.g (condoms) during intercourse. These children are drug addicts .They use tobacco, smoke cigarettes, use hashish, heroin and opium , sniff bond and so on. It is very disappointing that our government is aware of this problem but not taking any step to prevent this miserable social issue.

METHODS OF RESEARCH
There are many ways to get information. The most common research methods are: literature searches, talking with people, focus groups, personal interviews, telephone surveys, mail surveys, email surveys, and internet surveys. Methods which I used for research are: Literature search It involves reviewing all readily available materials. I searched in Dawn newspaper, Readers digest and in Herald. Talking with people Talking with people is a good way to get information during the initial stages of a research project. I talked to my parents first then my friends, regarding this issue I searched seminars and listened to talk shows. Talking with street children I talked to victims of this social evil near saddar. In the beginning they were not ready to talk to me then some how I convinced them and I tried to collect the information. INTERNET Remaining data I collected from internet from different websites.

RECOMMENDATIONS Government should take steps to prevent drug supply. One way to curb this problem is to provide education to all. Rate of poverty can reduce this social issue. Awareness should be given to people so that they can handle their children with care and love. Child labor has also increased which has given boost to this evil. Rehabilitation centers should be established so that these children may become useful members of the society. Human trafficking should be stopped. To accommodate these homeless children there should be homes. Children should be given their rights. These children when grow up become street criminals and thus street crime increases.

Conclusion
Street children are at a greater risk of HIV/AIDS , child abuse, drug addiction and other socials evils.