The word “protection” comes to the context where there exists vulnerability and risk. The presence of children on the street, whether it be day or night, is really stark and worrying, and bears the sign of a deep-rooted social problem.
They are on the street because they have no option, no alternative to live anywhere. There is no person or relative to fall back on for them. Their deprivation of necessary amenities to live, the lack of access to education, the absence of parental affection and a homely atmosphere, the lack of proper health care, their inability to escape mental and physical violence, hopelessness, maltreatment, bullying, and finally, their mistrust for society at large create great and lasting hurdles for their proper mental and physical growth.
From bad to worse
Because of their defective growth, as young men or women, their potential and working capabilities are much less than that of everyday people; they cannot make expected contributions to our national workforce.
Some of them cannot work at all as they either suffer from different serious diseases or they are too weak to work.
The condition becomes worse and horrifying when some of them are found engaged in multifarious criminal activities like dacoity, drug-dealing, arms-dealing, mugging, and other crimes. As street children, they are undoubtedly hazard creators, and as young adults, they are either seen as a burden or they are unwanted criminal elements.
A properly grown young man, even if he is an expert plumber, can come to the assistance of his community people in the time of their need, but the street children, due to the many factors mentioned, never come to the benefit of the community.
However, the question is simple: Can the street children alone be blamed for such an unwanted condition?
What protecting street children means
The 1989 UN Convention provides a right-based framework for all children, including the street children. The Convention establishes universal standards for children’s rights to dignity, freedom from discrimination, survival, development, protection and participation, with over-all consideration for the best interest of the children.
Protection is the key issue for intervention into the lives of the street children -- it demands immediate action to save and rescue the street children from different types of abuse, exploitations, torture, and inhuman behaviour towards them.
Not only that, but protection demands a long-term, well-designed program to promote street children’s development in respect of livelihood, education, and skill development so that their vulnerability might be minimized.
The issue of child protection implies an idea that the vital point lies in ensuring a congenial atmosphere for proper physical and mental development of the street children. For congenial atmosphere, the family, and other social and government organizations such as schools, hospitals, religious organizations, and the community at large should be child sensitive and child friendly.
There should be a sense of belongingness
Countless street children living on the street are born on the soil; they have not come to the street overnight from elsewhere in the world. Yet, they are the sons and daughters of this society. It is an undeniable fact that they belong to this society and this society belongs to them as well.
That is, the society, the state, the community obviously, have some responsibility towards them. The grounds of such responsibilities are based on legal framework, sense of belongingness, religious and moral creed, and finally, the ultimate objective of achieving national development, leaving no one behind.
Belongingness is an emotional feeling and the pervading thread of such community feelings are the same language, same culture, race, religion, and common interest which always serve as good conscience for mutual responsibility to each other.
Global stories
In Kampala, Uganda, the churches were central to community based child protection in the Congolese refugee community, and many churches were organized into associations which provided practical support to refugees.
Community initiative can make better protection mechanisms for the children; a success story is described by Save the Children, Hyderabad Office, India. Kavitha, an eight-year-old girl living in a slum, was harassed by an older man. The incident was ultimately reported to the Community Protection Committee. The committee managed to start a case against the perpetrator who was ultimately sent to jail, in spite of him being influential in society. There are also such success stories of this kind of positive action by the community in other countries like Kenya.
Community-led child protection mechanism does not necessarily indicate the actions by other re-agents like NGOs; it is the strength and power of the community people which is originated by strong community feelings. The community people organize themselves, find out the challenges, design the action plans, and materialize it without any external assistance and support.
In the words of the famous writer Paulo Friere, such actions put emphasis on dignity, agency, and the voice of even the most oppressed and the poorest people. In many countries of the world, many communities have been undertaking such activities for centuries in different contexts without giving it any title such as “child protection” etc.
Assessing problems
The problems of street children in our major cities, especially in Dhaka, are very critical. Their lifestyle is diversified, they keep on floating, and each child follows a style of his/her own.
All pervasive and similar is that all of them live on the street. The exact number of street children of Dhaka city is not certain by now. BBS is conducting a numerical survey to determine their exact number and UNICEF Bangladesh is conducting a qualitative survey.
Different NGOs and different development partners like UNICEF, ILO, and Save the Children have been undertaking different activities to address the problems of the street children of Dhaka city, but their activities are neither holistic nor perfectly coordinated, rather segmented and sporadic. Community participation for solving street children’s problems is rarely seen in Dhaka city. 
The need for concerted effort
According to a survey of ADB, the successful programs for street children should be multisectoral, because the health, education, survival, and emotional needs of street children are often impossible to address separately. ADB also suggested that networking, capacity building, and joint funding between service providers need to be systematically provided.
Another important issue is that to address the street children problem, professional social workers are needed. For example, professionalism means keeping one’s emotions in check. To be a true professional, one needs to stay professional even under pressure.
This takes strategies for managing one’s own emotions, plus a clear awareness of other people’s feelings. In short, emotional intelligence is essential.
In the existing position, DSS does not have a sufficient number of social workers in Dhaka city and moreover, they are not adequately trained to do the necessary jobs in this respect.
From the above discussion, it can be deduced that to address the street children problem in Dhaka, a well-designed action plan is required involving community, professional social workers, volunteers, NGOs and development partners. As religious organizations mosques can also play a very important role in disseminating the ideas and sensitizing the community people.
UNICEF might think of making a platform for coordinating the activities of all the stakeholders including NGOs and development partners. Above all, a massive program by government and non-government organizations should be launched to get the community involved in the child protection action plan.
If we can do it successfully, we can transform street children to reach their full potential and become our national assets.
Sheikh Rafiqul Islam is Director General, Department of Social Service (DSS).