Background Briefing

<<previous  |  index  |  next>>

Context

A Rwandan government report in 2001 estimated there were some seven thousand children2 living on the streets in urban areas.  Among various reasons, some children turned to the streets because they had lost all the adult members of their family during the 1994 genocide and war, and others, orphaned by the epidemic of HIV/AIDS, were forced to try to support themselves on the streets.

Since 2003, Rwandan government policy has favored reducing the number of centers assisting unaccompanied children, and increasing the placement of children with foster families (although in some cases children continue on the streets because they prefer life there to placement with foster families whom they disliked or who treated them badly). According to information from a U.N. agency representative who requested anonymity, the major government “rehabilitation center” for street children, located some forty kilometers from Kigali at Gitagata, has taken in very few children since October 2005.3

In late April 2006 the security council of Nyarugenge district, a part of Kigali city, recognized the seriousness of the problem of street children and, by implication, the inadequacy of the solution of simply detaining them in places like the Gikondo center. They announced plans to create training centers where street children from Nyarugenge district could learn crafts and trades to support themselves.4  Such plans, if implemented, would provide these children with the schooling and life skills training promised by the 2003 National Policy for Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children.

There are currently eleven centers operated by nongovernmental organizations caring for street children in Kigali, and another nine large centers outside of the capital.



[2] In conformity with usage in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) (art. 1) and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990) (art. 2), Human Rights Watch uses “children” to mean persons under the age of eighteen. For an investigation of the rights of children, including street children, up through 2000, see Human Rights Watch, “Lasting Wounds: Consequences of Genocide and War for Rwanda’s Children,A Human Rights Watch Report, vol. 15, no. 5 (A), March 2003, [online] http://hrw.org/reports/2003/rwanda0403/.

[3] Human Rights Watch interview with representative of U.N. agency, identity withheld, Kigali, April 26, 2006.

[4] Radio Rwanda, evening news broadcast in Kinyarwanda, 7 p.m., April 26, 2006.


<<previous  |  index  |  next>>May 2006