Egypt: The plight of Cairo's street children

say to zainab a working-class neighborhood close to the city center it's here that a group of Street children call home hey how are you today thank God all is well Behind These playful Smiles each child Bears a difficult history I've been on the streets a long time since I was little in fact as my father and mother are dead I'm waiting for my brother to get out of prison for me I just couldn't take it anymore I had too many problems with my family cover your feet they'll bring shame on us privately they tell one another Tales of their day forging a new kind of family all day we hunt for cigarettes and hashish afterwards we come back here because it's a place where we feel at home we love our brothers and shaima is a mother to all of us shaima loves us yesterday some guys came and hit Waheed shaima defended him and hit them back she defended all of us this is Shema in Egypt 30 of Street children are girls Shema is now the leader of the Gang a always takes our money she says we have to bring her at least 20 pounds every day [Music] come on we're going out it's often difficult to approach Street children Shamar was the only one who let us film without asking for money [Music] although she's now 24 Shema remains a child of the street he was raised amid violence my uncle killed my mother then my father tortured me to get the inheritance from my mother until I left home I was six years old I settled on the streets I became a street kid and like the others I took drugs there was nothing good for us on the street you there what do you want you stay in the street as if you were dead or in prison to survive Shamar juggles odd jobs working here as a parking attendant brings her a few coins and occasionally allows her to rent a small room [Music] until now it's been here that she sleeps along with her gang but now the building's guards won't let them in this place isn't fit for human habitation that's all it's become a drug then or a place for adultery where there's homosexual activity it's become a place of sin I'm just speaking in a general sense it's been stigmatized Street children don't have a good reputation in Egypt [Music] beaten by the gang leaders they are abused with complete indifference including insults extortion beatings or rapes they are also regularly accused of being thieves [Music] some of these children were born on the street they are second or even third generation Street children Shamar herself already has a girl and a boy who she eventually placed in foster care I didn't want my daughter to go through the same thing as I did I don't want her to end up like me [Music] Shamar placed her daughter here in vanity a hostel which opened in 2010. the organization would not allow us to meet her daughter [Music] to avoid disturbing the children vanity refused to reveal their identities go on put your hands here one after the other these are all homeless children they come from families who live on the streets and they're with us because we try to reintegrate them to take them to school so they have a normal life one just like any other child their age [Music] a return to normal also means getting back into a daily routine are you no that's your ex plate go and change before you eat this afternoon I'm nine years old and I've been here for a year now [Music] I like playing on the swings and I like television and I love waking up to go to school and learn these days this little boy doesn't have trouble imagining his future he wants to become a policeman and he knows exactly the reason why that way I can rescue children who've been kidnapped face a song three one two three [Music] the singing helps their behavior it helps them to work with one another and to remove any selfish Tendencies they might have [Music] I can express what's inside of me that means that when I'm sad and I feel like crying singing helps me to feel free unlike a minority who grow up in foster homes most of these children never get off the streets [Music] organizations like samusocial regularly work with children exactly like this once a month in shema's neighborhood this French NGO organizes a day just for them in order to protect the children's identities the organization asks that we not show their faces [Applause] but respecting the rules as part of a life in society is not always easy come here I want to speak to you what is it it's nothing but I don't like it when someone makes me play like they want [Music] Dr Youssef and his team teach the children how to manage their daily life to wash themselves to wear clean clothes these are the little victories which help them feel alive they want to feel alive in their own body a body which is survived that's why we organize this day for them at their own request another important part of the day a puppet show come on let's go let's go today Shema and a homeless boy play out their daily life on the stage what's happening at the end of the story um we we have a message to tell them that it's better to return them back home but we LED them to discover that by themselves and they advice to return back home this advice is rarely followed by these children as the street increasingly becomes their home as a result semi-social visits them several times a week [Music] we carry medications for emergencies and for dressing wounds we also have Betadine and surgical spirit for the past eight years this French NGO has been organizing care runs targeting Cairo Street children like this semi-social has cared for almost a thousand five hundred miners this little boy is 10 years old and has just arrived on the streets most important thing right now is that you stop smoking it's bad for your lungs why does your brother hit you you do bad things so he hits you is that it no I didn't even leave the house I didn't do anything he keeps me inside and hits me does your brother smoke and take drugs yes I asked him if he had a good relationship with his Dad he told me yes but he still has no idea where he is he's a baker boy has 12 uncles I told him to find one eventually he found one of them so we'll try to get as far as details so we can find his dad once more 2.7 million children are born in Egypt each year human rights organizations worry about this overpopulated country which is slipping deeper into economic crisis they worry that with many families increasingly vulnerable more and more children will end up on the street [Music] our reporter Nadia bletri is with us Nadia thank you very much for your report a professor suggesting the extermination killing these Street children it just seems inhuman was this an actual serious proposition that he was coming out with and I wonder how other people reacted on hearing that knowing if it's a serious suggestion or not it's hard to say certainly it's a shocking thing to say however it is true that these Street kids are very badly perceived in Egypt we were stopped several times while we were filming by ordinary passers-by who stopped Shima the main person in the report they insulted her they attacked her as saying why did you let them film you you're giving a really bad impression of Egypt we saw children beaten being called thieves and so on so it's certainly true that not only do they have difficult lives they're really not perceived well by the population at Large it's shocking indeed and we saw that in your reporter Nadia Egypt seems to have no solution second generation third generation Street children it's it's it's unimaginable in many ways but you found at least one hostel trying to help them are there any other people any other organizations trying to help these children [Music] the main group's trying to help these children at a local or International ngos like the one that we filmed in the report well the state has for the longest time been absent in this area it's really only recently in April in fact it wasn't the case when we began filming the report that they started cruising the streets of Cairo um of course they had to be trained by these ngos but they started getting out into the field a bit and meeting these kids on their own terms it really is early days we know the authorities want to get this started up in around 10 Governors but for now it really is the ngos which are supporting these children the Arab Spring which of course began in Egypt promised great things and we saw change but it now seems that the country's back where it started and I wonder what it means for the likes of these Street children who perhaps experience no change at all what does the future hold for these kids realistically to answer that you have to go back and look at the situation for Egypt as a whole country is currently in difficulty from the financial crisis it's not coming out of the inflation rate has been around 30 for several months now there's been another rise in fuel prices which could worsen that inflation and poverty it's an aggravating factor and not the only one for Street kids given the mistreatment and domestic violence to which they're submitted so the worrying economic situation could easily make things worse for them Nadia in terms of the day-to-day existence on the streets of Cairo how are these children living obviously they're begging obviously they're trying to find whatever they possibly can but is it a question of having to beg and steal is anybody providing any help any realistic help in terms of food for instance hello for example well to give you an example the ngos like the one we followed in the report are focused on helping in terms of care and distributing things like blankets in Winter and things to eat and drink and of course there's a certain number of day centers which can take them in for short periods it really is local structures like that which may not have a lot in terms of resources but still help however they can as they can Nadia thank you very much indeed for your film thank you for your analysis Nadia better joining us from Cairo and you of course can see nowaday's report again via our website francevancat.com thank you very much for watching this program this is reporters on France fan cat stay with us [Music]

Channel: FRANCE 24 English

Views: 105,368

Keywords: Egypt, children, poverty, EXTRAIT, france24, news

Id: VaukI9hsMOY

Length: 16min 5sec (965 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2017