Street children

Children living and working in streets along with their families are known as street children. They are the waifs and strays of streets. A street child is someone “for whom the street has become his or her habitual abode and source of livelihood”. He or she is improperly protected, supervised, or directed by responsible adults. Street children do not go to school. Instead, they peddle things in the streets or do other odd jobs as their parents earn less money or do not work. Street children often don’t have the means to earn money as they are not educated.

It is expected that there is more than 600,000 street children living in Bangladesh, 75 per cent of them live in the nation’s capital, Dhaka. In a country ranked 138th on the Human Development Index and where 50 per cent of the population is living below the poverty line, these children represent the absolute lowest level in social hierarchy in the world’s most densely populated nation. Nowadays, the population in this country increased, and the number of street children has also increased to an estimated 4 million. There is currently no official statistic of the number of street children in Bangladesh. It is nearly impossible to count their numbers as they increase by years.

There is not any specific age of street children in Bangladesh. Some are 6-12 who sell things and some are 13-15 who do other jobs. Children under 5 years can sometimes sell things or just roam around the streets. Most of the female street children are married from the age of 10, which leads them to a very difficult life. Other male children have to work hard to run their families. Many of the street children in Bangladesh die young as they are not properly taken care of. Government organizations sometimes help them. Most often it's non-government organisation which helps them, like The “UNICEF”. There are also some small non-government organisations in Bangladesh.