Ethiopia police trained to protect street children
November 11th, 2009 | by addis portal |Children who live on the streets have long reported being routinely abused, verbally and physically, by police officers. In some countries police have deliberately killed street children as part of ‘social cleansing’ operations. In Ethiopia, to help improve the situation, police trainers have been trained in child rights and child protection, with a particular focus on street children. Child abuse investigation methods will also be taught. The police trainers, due to qualify next month, will then in turn, pass their new knowledge and skills on to train 36,000 police officers throughout the country over the next three years.
The project run by Ethiopian Police University College, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Consortium for Street Children (CSC) will train 49 police trainers. The idea is to make police officers, often the first point of contact for street children, advocates of their rights and well-being, rather than their violators. By helping the Ethiopian police to respect and promote the rights of street children under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the training aims to make Ethiopia’s streets safer for thousands of vulnerable children.
Ethiopia counts one of the largest populations of orphans in the world: 13 per cent of children throughout the country are missing one or both parents. This represents an estimated 4.6 million children – 800,000 of whom were orphaned by HIV/Aids, according to figures from UNICEF. The country has seen a steady increase in the number of children being orphaned because of Aids. In the past, famine, conflict and other diseases were the main factors that claimed the lives of parents. Many street children don’t have access to basic rights such as proper care, education, psychological support and supervision. Often, orphans and other vulnerable children are forced to work to earn an income. They are exposed to various forms of exploitation, including sexual exploitation. “In all countries where you have a big HIV/AIDS epidemic, at first you don’t see any orphans at all, as they are absorbed by the traditional systems,” said Björn Ljungqvist, who works for UNICEF in Ethiopia. “And then all of a sudden you seem to reach some type of breaking point and you start finding these children in the streets.”
The project in Ethiopia started in December 2007 and is based on a research report by CSC called An Outside Chance: Street Children and Juvenile Justice. The child abuse investigation training is carried out by Alison McCausland MBE, former UK police officer who carries out pioneering work in the partnership approach to policing.
By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children
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