Child Street Hawking is common sight on streets in Africa cities towns, children sell products such as boiled groundnut, fruit and chips that they carry on trays balanced on their heads.
According to Akintunde Akinleye (2015), children street Hawking is one of the main forms of child labor. Others include children working at building sites or on farms. There is a need for each countries around the world to make adequate provisions for education, care and protection for this group, if each nations wants to progress.
Street hawking has huge implications for children physically and emotionally well-being. It exposes them to sexual abuse, physical exhaustion, vehicle accidents, death and malnourishment and drug substances abuse and prostitutions.
Research shows that among the young girls who street hawk, have a low awareness of pregnancy or the risk of sexually transmitted infections.
Child Street Hawking Opposes The Rights of The Child
According to Nzubfechukwu Okeke, child street hawking opposes the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Nigeria was a signatory to the convention, which was established in 1989. The convention makes it an activity which impacts negatively on their health and well-being. The convention also emphasizes the need for the government to protect children from exploitation
In addition to the convention, Nigerian’s Child Rights Act has similar provisions. It says Children should be protected from trafficking and/or street hawking. But the implementation of these provisions has been abysmal to date. Children are still being trafficked and pushed into street hawking despite the many dangers associated with it.
The parents of children who street hawk should be empowered economically to be able to take care of them. But the government should also create awareness about child trafficking and provide affected children with support.
Causes of Child Street Hawking
1. Poverty – poverty has pushed many children into street hawking. Poverty is bad, and it can push people into situations they do not want to find themselves doing. Children become street hawkers through parents, who send them to the street to hawk to supplement their family income. In most cases, their families migrated to the city on their own but could not cope with the high cost of living.
2. Religion – there are some religious practices and beliefs that send the children to street to start begging for money. Some of these children in the course of carrying out their religious duties fall prey to some hungry men in the society. A notable example is the one that occurs in Nigeria among Islamic religion. This is a situation whereby some children are sent out by their leaders called the mallam to go to the streets of the country and beg for food and money. Some in the process of doing this find their ways to other locations of the country where they save some money and start hawking on the streets. Most of these children are trafficked from the rural communities to the cities for illicit businesses.
3. Accidents, Desease or Terrorist Attacks – some orphans who lost their parents either accidents, desease, or to terrorist attacks. They live on the street and to survival.
Effects Of Children Hawking On The Streets
According to Ugochukwu Mike, it is not all about making money through children by sending them to streets to hawk but another thing that matters most are the effects or consequences of Street hawking. The effects of children street hawking are not only felt by the victims but by the society at large. The effects of Street hawking by children are, but not limited to:
1. Prostitution & Rape; there are many people that have made their bodies their own business set-up all over the world. The sole business of these women is to surrender their bodies to any man that needs them at any moment in exchange for money. Prostitution is a bad way of living because there are many dangers associated with it. The prostitutes we see in various buildings started it small and became professionals in the business. Some started when they were young as a result of hawking on the streets and become experts to their adult
On the other hand, many young girls that hawk goods on the streets as street children have on many occasions been raped by their superiors. The man may pretend to be nice to the poor girl child at the initial stage but end up forcing the girl into such wicked act irrespective of her age.
2. Poor Education; when will the children have time to go school when they are busy making money for their heads (the persons that sent them for such functions)? In fact, attending education is a history among most street children. The people that sent them to streets are only after the money the children will make for them in return to their destinations. Some madams that sent them out to the streets sometimes starve them when they do not make enough money on their return to their homes. Because these children were deprived the benefits associated with education, they face difficulties in their future lives. It is either they do not make enough money for their success in life or that they do not get employed to the places where they will be paid well as they have no qualifications. Some of them find themselves in the military and end up losing their lives in wars.
3. Gang Stealing; because street hawking children are exposed to a lot of negative things, they can form a group that goes out to steal people’s properties. They were always on the streets making possible efforts to make money hence lacking in morals. Out of hunger, they can make plans on how to troop into areas and steal. Most of them in the course of dating this may get shot by security men and that ends their journey in life.
These children from the experience they had from stealing in their young age sometimes end up being highway armed robbers terrorizing the whole environment and community they live in. They become a problem to the community by robbing various government establishments, banks, markets and other places they know they will realize the good sum of money after their operations.
4. Moral Decline; street hawking children are not properly equipped in normal practices. This has been affecting most of them in a very big way. The truth is that they are used as slaves which are to make for their boss. They are as good as money making machines. Because of the kind of shock that the girl street hawker experience, more specifically by rape, some of them swore that they will never be good to any man and sometimes goes to the extent of killing any man that comes in contact with them.
Prostitutions is a sigh of moral decline among people. Prostitution is one of the faces of moral decline in the United States. It is only men and women that are suffering from the deficiency in moral practice that venture into prostitution. Most children that are into street hawking do not live with their parents and this has robbed them when it comes to morality.
Solutions To Child/Children Street Hawking
According to Ugochukwu Mike, a number of ideas have to be accessed, cultivated and practiced to stop the challenge of Street hawking by children on the streets. It is believed that these points/ideas will solve this challenge that all countries in the world have been facing. The solutions to children street hawking are:
1. Implication Of Child’s Rights Act
Implication of Child’s Right Act is among the solutions to stop or reduce child hawking in many parts of the world.
The government and NGOs should work to ensure that the children are not treated in an inhuman manne. They should work by sending their officials to the streets of cities and fetch the wandering children and see how to punish the law offenders that send any child to the streets. When the offenders of the law protecting children rights are properly treating in accordance to the offense they commit, they will stop sending the children to the streets of hawking.
The government and UNICEF should work hand in hand to ensure that the law protecting the girl-child and boy-child are properly implemented and enforced. There should be government officials in different cities and towns in the world that will be checkmating on the children that hawk on streets and highways and proffer solutions to the children either by sponsoring them academically or providing the parents with the necessary skills that will increase their earnings.
2. Construction Of Orphanage Homes
The building of orphanage homes is another welcomed idea that can reduce the level of child hawking on the planet earth. Those who fall victims of Street hawking as a result of wars should be called into motherless baby homes were they will be taken good care of through the help from individuals and governments efforts. Doing this will reduce the number of street children and help overcome the health challenge they would have faced while hawking on the streets.
International and national bodies should assist poor countries by raising enough funds for the poor and more affected countries to solve the problem of children street hawking. When enough orphanage homes are built for the street hawking whose parents are no longer leaving, they will feel at home to some extent.
3. Reaching Out To The Poor
Some parents send their children to the streets not because they like hawking business by the children, but due to the fact that poverty is eating up their families. Parents know that what is good is good but couldn’t help themselves and among the solutions to reduce their poverty level is to send out their children to the streets to hawk.
When any children are seen hawking on the streets, the government officials who work to reduce the level of children street hawking should follow the children to their homes to see their parents. If after assessment and they discover that the parents of the children are poor, they should report to the government so that necessary attention will be given to both the children and their parents. The attention meant can be equipping such family financially to start a new business, enrolling the child in schools, and training the parents on the skills that will enable them to make money and sustain their families.
4. Amendment Of Some Religious Practices
There are some religious practices that common sense detects, they need adjustment and amendment. Some parts of Islamic practices that exposes the children to the streets, whereby they go out to the streets and beg for money and return in the evening to their teachers is to be abolished. This practice adds to the number of street children.
Exposing children to certain areas in the name of carrying out religious functions is inhuman. It is an act against the Child’s Rights Act and should be put to stop.
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