Street Children Literature Review

CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 INTRODUCTION
The following section will engage with a literature review which is integral to the whole paper. The purpose of the review is to understand the importance of victimisation of street children and focussing on the causes of living on the street. The literature review reveals that this research is worthwhile and that more contributions can be made in this field. It demonstrates the important issues previous research has brought forth and its relevance to the objectives of this paper. It may also reveal some of the controversies, what are the impact and the consequences of living on the street, thus allowing this

(2011), the street children phenomenon is an everyday social reality and varies between contexts and over time in many countries. Literature studies by Ray et al. (2011), Ward and Seager (2008), Thomas de Benitez (2007) as well as UNICEF (2006) characterize street children according to age, gender and their resilience in terms of their survival in the streets. Recent studies by Ennew (2004) and Panther-Brick (2003) argue that the definition of street children‖ was seen to be difficult for the following four reasons. Firstly, it is demeaning to children‘s experiences and does not explain the children‘s actual circumstances and where they are coming from. Secondly, it does not correspond with the street children‘s experiences in that the term has been used to refer to children in a variety of circumstances, ignoring the children‘s identity and factors that caused them to be on the streets. Thirdly, it labels and stigmatizes the street children with pitying connotations in that it is offensive and gives distorted messages about street children. Fourthly, it deflects attention from the broader population of children affected by poverty and social exclusion. Beazley (2011) adds that the biggest obstacle in understanding and defining the street children is that the children are stereotyped by the press, NGOs, community or the government and this makes life difficult for the street

Previous researchers has different definition of what is street children?, another aspect of to consider street children as Children less than 18 males or females, Who spend all or most of their time on the street, Who maintain minimal contact with their families or have no contact all, and Lack supervision, protection or guidance, which makes them vulnerable to a wide range of health and psychological hazards (Zain al-Dien, 1996). There are a lot of misunderstandings regarding the meaning of the word "street children", according to the UNICEF, (2001) children must fall under one of these two definitions in order to be called street children." they are many different kinds of street children where the commission of Human Rights (1994), point out that Street children have typically been represented as male, aged around 13 or 14, engaged in substance abuse, early sexual activity, delinquency, and either orphaned or abandoned. These stereotypes reflect public attitudes towards street children more than the reality of individual children’s