Anthony, 18, did not have an easy start in life, but he is a determined young man, and he gets a steady income from painting pottery. A few weeks ago, at a bus stop, I was reading a newspaper reporting the street battle that took place in Nairobi on April 11, 1998, a Good Friday, and resulted in the death of a watchman and a street child. Anthony, who I know by the looks, started reading the paper over my shoulder. I turned and asked him why there are so many children in the streets of Nairobi. He did not need to think twice: “Their mothers do not have enough money to send them to school, and sometimes they cannot even give them a little food. So they go out in the streets.” Are there other reasons? “No other reasons. The only reason is that people are too poor.”

It would be very difficult for Anthony or any of his friends to find his way and to feel at ease in one of the many seminars, symposia and workshops held in posh Nairobi hotels to discuss the challenge posed by the growing number of street children. Yet their opinion is important. They are the experts. I visited a house where 35 children who are in disadvantaged economic conditions are assisted. It is called Kivuli, and it is situated in Riruta area, initiated by a group of Kenyan young people who later got some assistance from Amani, an Italian NGO.
It was late afternoon and the children, their age ranging from the seven of Joshua to the seventeen of Paul, were coming back from the nearby public schools. As soon as I expressed my desire to sit down with them and to talk, they were all around me.
Why are there so many children roaming the streets of Nairobi? Their opinions come in fast one after the other. They are serious, do not make any joke, they talk from the wisdom of their suffered personal experience.

Says James: “Because there are many problems at home, sometime the father died, sometime the mother died and the stepmother does not give them food.” Adds Christopher: “The parents have no job. Sometime the children are so hungry that they steal from their house and then they are chased.”
“There are no basic necessities in the house,” says Peter. Another, Mike, says: “Sometimes the children are chased because there is no food in the house.”
Are the parents happy when they do something like that? “No”, - says Christopher - “they are not happy, they cry like their son.” There is an enormous sadness in his eyes, a sadness shared by 34 other pairs of eyes. “Especially the mother,'' whispers Daniel, ''cries a lot”. Useless to ask where his knowledge comes from.

Do you know any child who had himself decided to go and live in the streets and he is happy to stay there? “No,'' - is the immediate , unanimous answer - ''nobody wants to be a street child.” They shake their heads in disbelief, at the thought that a child could take such a decision himself, without being under some kind of external pressure.
What can we do to help those children out there in the streets? In spite of the harsh life, these children at Kivuli have not lost the gift of dreaming. Smile comes back on their lips. The youngest are the most eager to put forward their opinion. “Give them school and training,” says James. “Pray that good people may help them,” adds Peter. “Listen to what they want and reunite them with their families,” says Moses. “Provide them with education and a shelter like Kivuli,” adds Simon. “Yes,'' - stresses Martin - ''because after finishing their school they will get a job and then they will have the same heart to help others like the people who started Kivuli.”
The ultimate solution is offered by Timothy, a bony little boy with a big smile. He stretches his arms and says: “Bring them all here! We can share our food and stay together!”

The opinion of Anthony and of the children of Kivuli, may lack the sophisticated language you might read in the reports of the various workshops, but they hit the nail in the head. The root cause of the presence of abandoned children in the streets of Nairobi is the poverty, the sheer misery, of the three quarters of the population. The collapse of the family and of the traditional values, and all other causes one my find, come only in the wake of the abject, inhuman life so many people have to endure. The Convention of the Rights of the Child, adopted by the United Nation General Assembly in 1989 has been ratified by almost all countries in the world, in fact it is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history. Now, 96 per cent of the world's children live in states that are legally obligated to protect children's rights.

Those rights are comprehensive. The Convention defines children as people below the age of 18 whose “best interest” must be taken into account in all situations (art. 3). It protects children's right to survive and develop (art. 6) to their full potential, and among its provisions are those affirming children's right to the highest attainable standard of health care (art. 24), and to express views (art. 13). Children have a right to be registered immediately after birth and to have a name and nationality (art. 7), a right to play (art. 31) and to protection from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse (art. 34).

How many children enjoy these rights? In Kenya, a country of about 28 million people, it is calculated that there are 140,000 street children in urban centres countrywide, and that four million children of school going age are out of school because the cost of primary education - in theory free - is in fact unaffordable to their families.
An immediate solution is impossible, and nobody thinks that it is enough to ratify a Convention in order to guarantee the rights of children in impoverished countries. The very Convention recognises that not all governments have the resources necessary to ensure all economic, social, and cultural rights immediately. But it commits them to make those rights a priority and to ensure them to the maximum extent of available resources.

What worries is that in countries like Kenya the conditions of the children have steadily deteriorated, in spite of the ratification of the Convention. The periodic reports published by the NGOs involved in the struggle in favour of children's rights are becoming gloomier and raise a string of questions. Are the responsible authorities at least taking into serious consideration the deteriorating social conditions or are they closing up even more in smug isolation? Do they realise that public opinion is not any more taken in by a few high-sounding declarations?
The presence of desperate children in the streets of Kenya towns is the direct consequence of the mismanagement of the economy. Is it only a moralistic trick to remind the government officials that the street children they meet while driving around in big cars and immaculate suits, are not “the most unfortunate members of our society” - as they are referred to in the politicians jargon - but the victims of their incompetence or corruption?

In the Christian tradition, there is something called reparation and restitution. It means that those who have stolen must give back the ill acquired property, be it money or land. All of us who have comfortable lives, with three square meals a day, have somehow stolen from these children. A proper way to pay back the stolen goods, according to the level of our responsibility, could be to contribute to the running of a children's home operated by a credible group. They will gratefully receive anything, from a cabbage to supplement the next meal, to land for the building of new homes, or funds for the building of a school, a training centre. From our side it could be a way to personally ratify the Convention of the Rights of the Child.

Renato Kizito Sesana

AMANI