§ Mrs. SpelmanTo ask the Minister of State, Department for International Development how many street children there are in Asia; in which Asian countries they are located; and how many street children there are in each country. [123733]
§ Hilary BennIt is difficult to provide accurate data on the overall numbers of street children in Asia or to provide a breakdown by country. Estimates are unreliable and coverage is patchy. According to UNICEF there are roughly about 25 million children estimated to be living on the streets in Asia. However there is no reliable information for many Asian countries. In India the Ministry of Social Welfare estimates that there are between 75,000 to 250,000 street182W children in Calcutta alone. UNICEF estimate there are 15,000 street children in Vietnam and 16,000 in Sri Lanka.
The fundamental cause of children living on the street is poverty. This is exacerbated by chronic hunger, lack of school places and family conflict. Between 30 per cent. to 50 per cent. of children in South Asia are malnourished. Despite improvements in education provision around 41 per cent. of children drop out of school before they reach the fifth grade. Between 30 per cent. to 55 per cent. of school age children are working. Many of these children are exploited through child labour or are involved in the sex industry. Unless these problems are addressed the problems of street children in Asia will continue to grow.
§ Mrs. SpelmanTo ask the Minister of State, Department for International Development how much aid his Department gives to tackle the problem of street children in Asia; who this money is given to; and what the money is spent on. [123734]
§ Hilary BennUrban poverty, homelessness, lack of education and the demand for child labour forces children to leave their families and live on the streets in Asia. It is important that these underlying problems are addressed as well as helping street children directly. Our bilateral programmes in Asia aim to alleviate family poverty more generally as a basis for addressing the needs of street children.
Many of our programmes support NGO activities that advocate for the rights of children and work directly with street children. In Bangladesh we are supporting two NGOs to provide informal education to vulnerable working children in urban areas at a cost of £8 million. In Burma we have been supporting a street and working children project with World Vision a total cost of £450,000. In India we are supporting a local NGO to work with child street vendors and have several other small projects in the pipeline focusing on vulnerable working children in urban areas.
We are providing £1.6 million to Save the Children to work directly with vulnerable children in the Mekong sub region. This project aims to prevent poor rural children being trafficked to urban areas in the region for purposes of sexual exploitation and under age employment. This helps to reduce the potential for these children to end up on the street.
Other DFID activities also contribute indirectly to addressing the problems of street children. Improving basic education for every child is the main contribution that Asian Governments can make to reducing child poverty and indirectly to reducing the numbers of street children. Support to basic education is a major focus of our bilateral programme in Asia and in 2001–02 DFID committed £130 million to support this.
Another example is the £12 million urban poverty reduction project in Cochin in India that has helped to improve basic services for poor families and their children.