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As the world hails the intensification of globalization, the number of children living on the streets has steeply increased, participants in a 21-25 January inter-regional consultation organized by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) reported. The consultation, on "Fullness of life and dignity of children: focus on street children", took place at Virar, near Bombay, India.
Participants - church leaders from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East - said that the plight of street children calls churches to engage even more actively with and for such vulnerable children, and gave several examples of churches working to protect children's dignity and their right to a decent life.
“Despite tremendous growth in economic activity and the globalization of trade and capital, despite the penetration of transnational corporations into every corner of the world and the increase of productivity, the world’s poor have not benefited, and the children of the poor suffer the negative impact of this much-popularized development growth”, the church leaders observed.
They testified that millions of children living and working on the streets come to hate the society that has rejected them. But they also gave examples of churches playing a vital role in responding to the cry of "a generation lost in the wilderness", reuniting street children with their families and reintegrating them into society. They also emphasized that churches need to move away from a traditional charity-based approach as the magnitude of the problems faced by children intensifies.
Fr Gabriel Cazacu of the Rumanian Orthodox Church, who works among street children, said that market-oriented economic reforms in Rumania have created large numbers of street children, more and more of whom are addicted to drugs like poisonous glue. The Orthodox Church has been providing care and protection to hundreds of street children. "The love and affection they have received has helped them to blossom," Fr Cazacu added.
"African children's lives are becoming much more vulnerable due to […] rising intra-state conflict and loosely organized fighting groups, and to HIV/AIDS", said Emmanuel Motsamal, who coordinates a National Council of Churches in Botswana programme on children.
Caribbean Council of Churches president Oluwakemi Linda Banks reported that "the changing pattern in social and family lives and moral values, and the increasing breakdown of the family have affected the upbringing of children in many parts of the Caribbean".
Joan Arelis Figueroa of the Church of the Disciples of Christ, Puerto Rico, also reported that the number of child workers and street children in Latin America has increased. Begging and juvenile delinquency are common in most Latin American countries, and increasing violence among these children is the result of promiscuity, growing poverty and hunger, she said.
WCC programme executive for Latin America and Caribbean Marta Palma provided additional statistics on how children are being mistreated and exploited in Latin American countries, but said that several rehabilitation and counselling centres for children have been initiated by Latin American churches.
Chuleepran Pearsons of the Church of Christ in Thailand (CCT), and CCA executive secretary Josef Widyatmaja observed that sexual exploitation of children, including prostitution, pornography and trafficking has become a serious problem in Asia ever since economic liberalization was launched by Asian governments. Several Asian countries have been experiencing a wave of sex tourism, which destroys the dignity of thousands of Asian children every year."
The CCT has opened up new avenues to asylum and foster care for many abandoned children and those whose parents are affected by HIV/AIDS, Chuleepran reported.
Clarissa Chang of the Council of Churches in Malaysia said some churches in her country have motivated congregation members to foster children who need care and protection. And the programme director the Church of North India ministry to children, Sanjana Das, described the dedication of several local congregations to fulfilling the basic needs of vulnerable children through custodial care.
In a keynote address at the start of the consultation, WCC programme executive for Asia Mathews George Chunakara pointed out that "Despite all the international instruments existing now to protect and promote the rights of the child, especially the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989, which has been ratified by 191 countries, more than 250 million children around the world are on the streets, and most of them are in Asia and Latin America".
Inaugurating the consultation, CCA president Metropolitan Dr Joseph Mar Iranaeus of the Mar Thoma Syrian Church in India said that "As we are surrounded by millions of children who have lost dignity and fullness of life in their day-to-day lives, churches around the world should respond to God's call to be the partners in His mission to restore the dignity and fullness of life of all children." These are God's gifts, and "children deserve them as much as any other human beings," he said.
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