Children in Street Situations
UNICEF is committed to helping, protecting and defending this vulnerable group.
- فارسي، فارسي
- English
The issue faced
Children in street situations (CiSS) are defined as children whose world and livelihood depends upon what they can obtain in the streets. CISS include those who accompany their peers, siblings, or family members in the streets. In 2023, the State Welfare Organization (SWO) provided an estimate of 120,000 children engaged in some form of child labour.
Streets can be an unforgiving place for children. They are at risk of contracting infectious diseases, frequently exposed to violence, bullying, sexual exploitation, and substance abuse. Access to health care and protection services is limited. Moreover, missing critical school years severely constrains the prospects for CiSS to obtain decent work and fulfil their overall life potential.
There is a high prevalence of child labour among Afghan refugee children in street situations. In many cases, this occurs in connection with instances of worst forms of exploitation, with children being exposed to various diseases while collecting waste, begging, or street peddling.
The actions taken
During the period 2023 – 2027, CiSS comprise a key target group for UNICEF. In this regard, UNICEF plans to undertake the following actions:
- Strengthening national coordination mechanisms, with a child-rights approach embedded.
- Enhancing protection services by training social protection professionals.
- Expanding the social safety net through cash assistance and family empowerment progammes.
- Boosting the capacity of the learning ecosystem to detect, include, and retain out-of-school children in the national education system, and offer quality non-formal education opportunities as a transition to formal education.
- Supporting evidence-based action in key areas, enhancing health, nutrition, and hygiene practices.
- Empowering adolescent boys and girls in street situations to be agents of change, through participatory planning and creating innovative and entrepreneurial solutions.
Collecting data to facilitate informed policy decisions that accurately respond to the prevailing situation on the ground and projected trends.
The partners engaged
The State Welfare Organization is the lead UNICEF partner for programme implementation in this focus area. UNICEF also intends to work with various other partners, including the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Health and Medical Education, as well as private sector actors and civil society organizations.
The impact sought
Rescuing children from the streets is not a once-off action. UNICEF consistently tables concrete proposals for a long-term systemic approach that enables children and families to emancipate themselves progressively and sustainably. Such endeavour aims at fostering a society where all children’s needs are met in terms of health, nutrition, and transition to gainful employment, and where cases of abuse and poverty are proficiently addressed, and those children affected are empowered to move beyond the frame of such occurrences to achieve their potential.
Monitoring and Accountability
In adherence to principles of accountability, UNICEF enriches its programme designs and adaptations through systematic assessment and monitoring of the child’s rights deprivations, operating environment, partnerships and progress towards planned results. The implementation of Harmonised Approach to Cash Transfers (HACT) ensures both financial and programmatic compliance through a combination of micro and macro assessments, spot checks, audits and programmatic visits. Leveraging sophisticated and integrated enterprise platforms and tools, UNICEF maintains a consistent monitoring of its programme implementation assessing quality and coverage, identifying risks and challenges, highlighting best practices and lessons learned, fostering stakeholder participation and engagement and conducting end user monitoring of supplies. Additionally, UNICEF remains committed to its costed evaluation plan which includes external evaluations of its projects, partnerships, and/or strategies primarily aiming to enhance relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact, and sustainability of its programmes.