Street children in the Philippines

According to a 1998 report titled "Situation of the Youth in the Philippines", there were about 1.5 million street children in the Philippines.

The approximate numbers of street children in the different districts of the Philippines are: Manila (3,266), Quezon (2,867), Caloocan (1,530), and Pasay (1,420). Regional numbers are:

Approximately 70% of the children are boys.

According to the "A Better Life" foundation, there are three different categories of street children:

The most common substances are inhalants, such as solvents, rugby (a toluene-based glue) and cough syrups, followed by marijuana and shabu. Marijuana and shabus in particular are shared with friends whenever one of the group has enough money to buy them. Some street children take drugs as often as once a day. A 1997 study estimated that up to 40% of street children had used drugs in the past. Other reports suggest that 66% to 85% of children had used inhalants, and 3% had used marijuana and shabu.

Street children are generally thin, untidy, undernourished, and hardly equipped to survive the hazards of everyday living and working on the streets. Some of the hazards they face include sickness, physical injuries from motor accidents, street fights, harassment from extortionists and police, sexual exploitation by pedophiles and pimps, exposure to substance abuse and sexually transmitted diseases.

Many street children were in danger of summary execution during the Marcos Government era. In 2005, a report found that 39 children in Davao City had been killed by vigilante groups since 2001, most after having been released from police detention cells.

Human rights groups said the killings have become an unwritten government policy to deal with crime, largely because of an ineffective criminal justice system and the tendency of the authorities to take shortcuts in the administration of justice. The execution-style killings are openly endorsed by local officials, strengthening the long-running suspicion that the death squads were formed by the government.

Child prostitutes are used by foreign sex tourists and pedophiles, as well as local people. Many street children are lured into prostitution as a means of survival, while others do it to earn money for their families. A variety of different factors contribute to the commercial sexual exploitation of children in the Philippines.

Rooted in poverty, as elsewhere, the problem of child prostitution in Angeles was exacerbated in the 1980s by Clark Air Base, where bars employed children who ended up as sex workers for American soldiers. Street children are at particular risk because many of the 200 brothels in Angeles offer children for sex. According to 1996 statistics of the Philippine Resource Network, 60,000 of the 1.5 million street children in the Philippines were prostituted.

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Wikipedia