What works?

Working with these children is predictably complex.

First of all, accessing these children is challenging. Social workers and children who were formerly involved in street based sex work conduct outreach to areas where research has shown there is a high concentration of children involved in street based sex work. They are confronted by a network of vested interests which conspire to restrict access to the children.

In the first instance, the pimps, madams and their strongmen resist because it is a threat to their business. In addition, outreach staff and peer supporters face resistance from journalists who are paid not to report, small businessmen who benefit from the high footfall in the area, the police who are paid to turn away, and the politicians who indirectly benefit from these collective vested interests. Often community members speculate that the outreach staff and peer supporters are sex or organ traffickers, though this does not appear to be motivated by a genuine concern for the children’s wellbeing.

Where is it possible to access the children involved in street based sex work, building a rapport and trust takes time. The outreach staff and children often take 6-8 weeks gradually building up a relationship.

Once children start visiting the centre and using the services available - shelter, food, washing facilities, education, healthcare, vocational training - it takes time for them to adjust. Attendance patterns are often erratic in the early weeks and months. Children are often aggressive, violent and reluctant to trust adults. Although this reduces over time, they can remain very volatile. It takes understanding and patience on the part of staff to handle this constructively. Pressure is counterproductive - children will rebel if staff give them ultimatums etc. A softly, softly approach is preferred, allowing a child to adjust at their own pace, providing counselling to support them through this process.

It takes time too for the children to release themselves from the grip of those adults who abuse and exploited them. There is a very complicated relationship between the abusers and exploiters and the children. With their self esteem destroyed and no protection from parents and family, the children can grow dependent on or attached to the affection and protection that the abusers and exploiters sometimes provide. The process of breaking these relationships can be very difficult.

Trauma and self harm is prevalent among these children. They also exhibit a lot of attention seeking behaviour, competitiveness and jealously which is understood to be rooted in the self esteem issues. HIV and STIs are prevalent too, which has ramifications for the care provided. For instance, different and more individualised nutrition is needed for these children, and additional precautions have to be taken to prevent transmission through bodily fluids.
Many of the children also have a physical urge for sex after growing habituated to it. This compounds the economic pressures to engage in sex work. It is not realistic or feasible to expect the children to change immediately and to lure them off sexual activity and / or sex work immediately.

Perplexing...

One of the most striking things about the situation is how young the girls involved in street- based sex work are. In fact many are so young they must be pre-pubescent or peripubescent.

There are some possible explanations: the older children have become entrenched in sex work and are less accessible; the older children have moved out of sex work, into the garment industry; the older girls have moved into hotel / brothel based sex work - which is legal - as soon as it is possible to falsify their age as 18 and obtain the requisite court affidavit authorising them to engage in sex work.

However, this also raises the question of why is there a demand for girls of such a young age. The clients presumably must know that these children have not reached physical maturity and are therefore considered children by both legal and cultural standards. The social workers gave two reasons why a client might prefer a child to an adult: adult sex workers work predominantly in the legal hotel based sex work and this is more expensive so some people will seek the cheaper option - children involved in street based sex work; and children are easier to manipulate and so will do whatever you ask of them. There do not appear to be any beliefs promoting sex with children, such as the belief in Southern Africa that sex with a virgin will cure HIV.

So, is this demand for sex with children indicative of paedophilia (sexual attraction to children) or can it be explained through a cultural or other basis? It's an interesting question given that there is no local word for paedophilia.

Arresting insights

Our work in Bangladesh concerns children involved in street based sex work. They're boys and girls, aged 9-16 years old. They're usually children who have found themselves alone on the street due to family breakdown, because they've fled abuse, or because poverty in the hope of a better life. On the street, without protection and desperate to survive, they fall prey to exploitation. In some cases, the child and / or their parents have been conned into leaving their home by a family member or stranger who has promised to find them a job or a dowry-free marriage, only to find themselves being forced into sex work. It's an arresting situation that evokes a strange combination of emotion and shocked numbness.

Boys who are involved in street based sex work, have usually been primed over time rather than introduced directly into sex work. The sexual encounters are overwhelmingly male-male and their clients are predominantly truck drivers who they come into contact with when unloading the trucks. The boys may initially be asked to perform some small job of a personal nature like plucking grey hairs out of their head or massaging them. This is used to build a more intimate relationship with a child and introduce a commercial dimension to the relationship. Truck drivers have a preference for boys because they attract less attention from the security patrols at night, particularly during the current security situation.

In contrast, girls involved in street based sex work are often introduced directly into sex work and sexual encounters are female-male. They work under the control of two tiers of pimps or madams – an intermediary who supervises the girls and a ‘big boss’ who controls sex work in a particular area. These relationships are fundamentally exploitative but they do afford the girls some degree of protection on the streets and they often become emotionally attached.

Their clients generally prefer unprotected sex but it’s changing. First of all, as the middle class become more educated and sensitised to HIV and STIs, middle class clients are wanting / accepting protection. Second of all, as the girls reduce their dependency on sex work, they can be more selective about which clients they accept. However, this is more difficult on the street because most street-based sex work clients are working class and less educated.

It costs about 200 BDT (c. £1.50) to have sex with a child, of which only 20-50 BDT (c. 15-40 pence) reaches the child. The rest is split between the intermediary and the pimp / madam (known as the ‘big boss’). The fairer, more attractive and younger you are, the higher the price. Age is a factor predominantly because the younger you are, the more likely that you will be manipulated and do whatever you are told to.

There is an interesting connection between the boys and girls involved in sex work. Often the boys use their income from sex work to have sex with girls involved in sex work. In other contexts such behaviour patterns have been attributed to boys seeking to reaffirm their heterosexuality after a homosexual sexual encounter, but it's not clear whether or not this is the case in Bangladesh.

While these insights are arresting, spending time with these children you are struck by an equal measure of amazement and hope. The children are incredibly resilient and with the help of the social workers have developed in remarkable ways and just ooze vibrancy and talent.

Visit to the countryside!

Bangladesh's pride

Ask people in the development sector what they associate with Bangladesh and they'll likely answer 'natural disasters and micro-credit'. Particularly since Mohammad Yunus was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his Grameen Bank. Bangladesh has a remarkable development sector. I have never seen or heard of so many micro-credit institutions. There are literally hundreds and hundreds.

Nor have I ever seen or heard of such enormous institutions. Two of the biggest are Grameen and BRAC. The are now not merely NGOs running development projects and dependent on foreign funding. These institutions run multiple businesses to generate their income. You would be hard pressed not to notice the advertising hoardings everywhere. To change money I visited BRAC's own commercial bank. To use my mobile I connected to Grameen's mobile network. To shop for souvenirs I visited BRAC's 4 storey shopping emporium of handcrafted goods. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. These two institutions alone have many more businesses. Its a bizarre situation compared to many countries where local organisations struggle to survive simply because they are donor dependent and struggle to raise income to cover the costs donors won't.

But the much lauded micro-credit sector has recently come under more intense scrutiny and criticism. Cyclone Sidr which hit Bangladesh in December 2007, has had a significant impact on micro-credit institutions. In the initial weeks, micro-credit institutions continued to collect payments and seize property and liquidate it if payments were overdue. Understandably, this sparked public outrage. The caretaker government responded by barring any micro-credit institution collecting payments for 3 months. This has panicked the micro-credit institutions. They have so much capital invested in the cyclone affected region that they risk going under and so many have gone into a hibernated state.

Some people also remarked that there are so many micro-credit providers, people are using them like credit cards and personal loans – taking one out to pay off another. Others questioned why, if micro-credit and rural development initiatives are effective, was rural to urban migration still so prolific - why are there still so many children and people coming to the live desitute on the streets of the country's cities. UNHABITAT estimate that 500,000 people come to the Dhaka city every year.

Uncertain times ahead for Bangladesh...

Back in 2006, the Bangladeshi government was dismissed to make way for a caretaker government that would oversee elections. But it didn't go smoothly. In January 2007 the country was put under emergency rule by the military and the elections postponed. In most countries in the world, the intervention of the military in government creates a panic. It signals that the separation of powers and democratic principles have been overridden.

Although the election date continues to be postponed, the military bizarrely seem to have assumed a benevolent character, striving to protect democracy and right wrongs. Most significant has been a massive crackdown on corruption. The crackdown has involved the arrest and prosecution of 100s of corrupt politicians and businessmen, including 2 former Prime Ministers.

Although people claim to be shocked and appauled by the scale of corruption and the are supportive of the crackdown, many people seem to have almost become paralysed by the fear of being implicated in corruption. This must be a very real possibility given Bangladesh's ranking on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Scale. Bangladesh came in last place five years on the trot between 2001-2005 and remains 7th from bottom.

But there is a greater paradox.

No-one expects these positive steps forward to last long. The election, to be held in late 2008, is forecast to result in one of the two leading parties coming to power. People expect that whichever of these two leading parties comes to power, there will be a major backlash: those who were convicted of corruption will be released and their sentences quashed; the laws brought in under the caretaker government will be deemed invalid; and the members of the caretaker government will be arrested, if they are still in the country. Some people speculate that key figures in the caretaker government will be on the last flight out of the country before the elections, fleeing into exile.

Anticipating this the caretaker government seem to be buying time. They have announced a country wide voter registration scheme. Elections will nto occur until this is complete. This enormous task - across a country of 150 million people - is underway. Meanwhile, there are rumours the caretaker government is trying to form an alliance among the smaller parties. An alliance that can prevent the two leading parties coming to power.

Whether or not they succeed, the run up to the election looks like it will be unsettled. Aside from the corruption crackdown, the 'talk of the town' is food prices. Food wholesalers are manipulating the market and colluding to increase prices dramatically. Some people forecast mass protests as this is getting intolerable, particularly in terms of staple goods like rice. It's these sort of things - things that affect people's daily lives rather than the political manueoverings of the elite - that could spark more civil unrest.

Scenes from Dhaka and Chittagong

Scenes from Kolkata

Everything I expected India to be...

Kolkata is an amazing city, every bit the sensory overload I expected India to be. Every frame is full of colour, life, surprises.There are people everywhere, living on every pavement, beneath underpasses, beside pipelines, on roundabouts, on intersections, in parks, beside the railway line... Every space has been settled.

Some pavements look like your stereotypical refugee camps - tarpaulins strung up from the side of the building, clothes strung between the trees lining the street, mothers preparing meals in ceramic cooking pots and charcoal, scantly clad children playing with makeshift toys, children and adults sorting through rubbish looking for materials to recycle, women with infants reaching out to passers-by for change. Dogs wander to and fro.

What is perhaps less predictable and more surprising is the public displays of washing. There are standpipes along every pavement and each is surrounded by half naked men and boys washing rigorously with soap and buckets of water. Where and how women and girls wash is not so clear. I never saw any at a standpipe. When it comes to toilets, there is again a gender disparity. There are open public urinals along the pavement. Some ornate, others nothing more than a hole above an open channel. But despite this initiative, you frequently see people urinating or squatting where they can, usually over rubbish dumps and along the kerbside. It's just another indicator of the overwhelming congestion and dire lack of sanitation.

What is perhaps most fascinating and frightening is that some of these people and families are second, even third generation pavement dwellers... It's no longer a case of city slums growing due to rural-urban migration. Much of their growth is now from within. Particularly among those communities, like the Muslim slum communities, where family planning and birth control has not caught on.

Pedestrians, unable to walk along the congested pavements, compete perilously with the traffic. Motorised rickshaws buzzing along, elegant but battered old 1950s Ambassador cars puttering along, motorbikes weaving in and out, and rickshaws pulled by aging stick thin men.

The streets are lined by 100-150 year old buildings, full of character and history. Beautiful colonial architecture, verandas, arches, wooden shutters, intricate iron work, bushes and grasses growing out of nooks and crannies. Faded and crumbling, but irrespressibly elegant and fascinating.

Kolkata's largest railway station is reportedly the busiest railway station in Asia, with tens of thousands of people passing through every day. It is like a microcosm of the city itself, overflowing with the people and small traders. I met people who'd lived on its platforms for the last 18 years. The Railway Police Force now patrol the platform at night, moving people on. The result, the car park outside the station is littered with people sleeping rough.

The railway stations are a fascinating place because its where most people arrive in the city. Among them, thousands of children from outside Kolkata who have been drawn to the city or are forced to strike out alone to make a life for themselves. They have hitched a free ride, lost in the crowds that board the trains. Many find life on the streets of a city like Kolkata exciting. Its vibrancy, freedom, lack of boundaries, potential for earning enough money to feed themselves. But desperation, naivety and lack of protection make many street children easy prey for adults. The most unfortunate are lured away into the 'caves' below the station platforms, into the back of small stores, or into dark and dingy cinemas to perform sex acts.

Crazy Kolkata

So I went to Kolkata and Kolkata went crazy. In two weeks:

• There were two violent protests over a land dispute and a controversial author


• The land being disputed was taken by armed men and retaken by another group of armed men using hostages as a human shield


• Armed men loyal to the government shot a dozen protesters dead


• There were two non-violent protests over the land dispute and the torture and murder of Muslim boy


• There was a protest by the ruling party in response to a judicial ruling which was critical of their actions in response to the land dispute


• There were two strikes


• The army were deployed onto the streets for three days


• There was a curfew for one night


• There was a panic because the weathermen forecast that a cyclone was about to hit (it veered off though and hit Bangladesh instead)

First impressions...

Delhi wasn't a shock. I thought it would be. I thought a city of 14 million people would be overwhelming. Accepted, there were a lot of people. Standing on the minaret of the city's largest mosque, looking out over walls of the Red Fort and markets of Old Delhi, there were people as far as the eye could see.

Walking around the same areas at night, still the ground was littered with people. Littered is probably an appropriate word. Thousands of adults and children wander the streets by day, and curl up on the pavements by night, saris pulled over their heads for some privacy. Sometimes the lines of still bodies covered head to toe in cloth look like lines of corpses in the aftermath of a disaster.

During the day the children can be found sorting through rubbish to sell onto recyclers, working in tea shops, begging, performing to drivers at traffic lights with painted faces and makeshift musical instruments. As you walk through the markets and slum areas in the pitch black of night you can make out children taking heroin to escape the reality of their lives. Much more goes on out of sight. Sexual abuse and exploitation is prevalent. It's hard to get definitive data on the scale of the problem as children come and go, but there are an estimated 45,000 children living alone in the streets in Delhi alone. Hundreds of thousands more live with their families on the streets or in the slums.


These adults and children are treated like the litter of the economic powerhouse of modern day India, discarded and largely overlooked by a growing Indian middle and upper class that has the disposable income to make it difference. According to a recent study of Child Abuse in India (http://wcd.nic.in/childabuse.pdf), although children are 40% of the population, only 4.91% of the total government expenditure is spent on children's health, education, development and protection. Only 0.034% is spent on child protection.


Adjusting to working in this middle income context has been the shock. In many of the developing countries I've worked there are some strong characteristics. Half of the government's budget is aid. The largest employer, after the government, is the NGO sector. The most sought after job is an NGO job. Civil society is often relatively new. Modern India is not dependent on aid. The government calls the shots, not the donors. Large bi-lateral, government to government, donors are thinking about phasing out their support. The new generation are looking to the private sector for a career and financial security. The NGO sector is full of local organisations that are enormous institutions with long and rich histories. They are strong and assertive and look to the north predominantly for funding rather than a package of capacity building and funding. It's a new context that forces you to think hard about power, influence, partnership and your role.

A lot of positive things stuck in my mind aside from the thousands of people living on the streets of Delhi. The streets full of 1950s white and yellow Ambassador taxis; the historical buildings at every turn; the expansive and beautiful parks; the clean air the government have achieved by forcing all buses and taxis to switch from petrol and diesel to gas; the literally continuous stream of newspaper reports of crazy bus drivers running down scores of people; the snake charmer in the market; the elephant I met at a crossroads in the middle of the night when I first arrived in Delhi.

Introductions

If you've been with me through my time in Northern Uganda, you'll know I recently left to take up a new job. So I'm making my way from the back of beyond to London, from where I'll manage child protection programmes in India and Bangladesh. An altogether new and challenging experience - it'll mean continuing to work with street children, children in conflict with the law and child victims / survivors of sexual abuse and exploitation, but doing so in a new continent, with a new organisation, and with a different approach and way of working.