Sana’a has 4,000, according to UN report30,000 street children in Yemen [Archives:2003/682/Local News]

Mohammed bin Sallam
Sana’a, Nov.1 – More than 30.000 children are living as vagrants in the streets of Yemen, according to a study presented by the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNECIF.
Out of this number, about 4,000 children aged 6-year old are found in the capital, Sana’a.
The phenomenon of children vagrancy is on the rise, at about 4 per cent on an annual basis.
The study mentioned that about 58 per cent, wash cars and beg, 17 per cent work as hardware collectors, 7 per cent work as cattle grazers, 5 per cent work as fruit and vegetable sellers, 4 per cent as porters, 3 per cent as donkey cart riders, 2 per cent in bakeries, and 5 per cent in other professions.
The study confirmed that most of those children are not monitored by the parents or families, which have made them fall prey to going astray.
It has been made clear that about 57 per cent are not in school due to poverty.
About 43 per cent of those children have left school, and that 25 per cent left school in order to provide the basic necessities for sustaining their families. About 60 per cent depend on themselves for making a livelihood.
Thousands of children are flooding streets as beggars in roundabouts.
The picture in reality seems even worse, when we see men, women, old and young, girls and boys all moving in great numbers and asking for alms.
Food security is really non-existent in our economy, and this in turn intensifies suffering of people particularly children, posing, for them, a very hazardous uncertain future.
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