Children without a voice

Only weeks before the government launched a plan of action for the country's estimated 150,000-plus street children, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) released its own report on the subject, bringing international attention to a problem of alarming proportions. According to the hefty report, Egyptian children face routine abuse at the hands of the authorities, while exploitation of all kinds is the rule of thumb on the street.

In an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, Clarisa Bencomo, the report's author, stressed the gravity of the situation. "These children have not committed any criminal offence, and in many cases the very basis for their arrest -- that they are begging, homeless, truants, or mentally ill -- shows that they are in need of protection and assistance rather than punishment."

Central to Human Rights Watch's report is the assertion that existing legislation is often used as a pretext for abuse. Egypt's Unified Child Law is particularly problematic because the law's ambiguous designations of children as "vulnerable to delinquency" and "vulnerable to danger" have encouraged a multiplicity of wholly arbitrary interpretations.

According to the report, more than 25 per cent of all children arrested in Egypt in 2001 were considered "vulnerable to delinquency" under the Child Law. That represents more than 11,000 arrests of children in one year alone. The majority had committed no crime, and most often, were simply out of school -- either trying to make a buck on the street by working or simply begging.

Once in detention, states the report, children are faced with many forms of mistreatment, including extortion, beatings, sexual abuse and detention in unsanitary conditions for days, sometimes weeks. Abuse occurs at the hands of the authorities as well as adult detainees. Adequate food, water, bedding and medical care are never the norm.

According to Human Rights Watch, abuse is systematic, while the situation is almost never monitored. The report makes a series of strong recommendations for increasing accountability and bridging the information gap between the local police who interact with these children daily and the policy-making ranks of the Egyptian government.

The report argues that public prosecutors and judges should actively monitor arrest practices and conditions for children in police custody. "We recommend in particular that the attorney-general designate a full- time position to oversee government investigations of torture and ill-treatment of children in police custody and that the ministries of interior, justice, insurance and social affairs work together to ensure that child welfare experts, rather than the police, are primarily responsible for matters involving vulnerable children."

Bencomo extended this thought: "The role of the office of the prosecutor-general, the Ministry of Social Affairs, and the NGOs will be extremely important if there are to be real improvements... these are the groups that have the greatest capacity to implement programmes and, in the case of the prosecution office, to investigate and bring to justice police who abuse children."

While widespread reform of the criminal justice system may be an ambitious goal for the immediate future, Bencomo points out that the most obvious reform is perhaps the simplest one.

"An even more important first step would be stopping the routine arrest of children... it would result in an immediate improvement in those children's lives and would require no additional resources to implement."

Like any report on human rights in the country, Human Rights Watch's report can exist in a virtual vacuum if not effectively disseminated. According to Bencomo, the report has been well received thus far, circulated at the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) by its head, Ambassador Moushira Khattab, and distributed to several human rights and children's NGOs.

Meanwhile, a significant effort has been made to share the report with decision- makers in the government. Bencomo has met with the attorney-general, as well as high-ranking officials at the Ministry of Social Affairs and the Ministry of Justice.

The report, Charged with Being Children: Egyptian Police Abuse of Children in Need of Protection, was born of countless interviews with street children in the Greater Cairo area, encompassing the governorates of Cairo, Giza and Qalyubiya, in addition to interviews with employees at drop-in centres for street children, members of the police forces, social workers and staff in the juvenile justice system.

Combined with the momentum born of the government's launch of its new strategic plan on street children, the report may make inroads in bringing attention to the fate of the country's most vulnerable citizens -- a population that is too often left without a voice.

Human Rights Watch's report on street children in Egypt may be accessed at: http://hrw.org/reports/2003/egypt0203/