Government aims to reduce the number of street children

The Republic of Congo's Ministry of Family and Social Affaires launched on Saturday a programme to reduce the number of the country's street children. The programme, titled "One Child, One Family", pairs host families and street children for a day of one-on-one quality time. The project will involve 500 children from Congo's two most populous towns: Brazzaville, the capital, and Pointe-Noire. "The objective of the operation is to give children living on the streets or in orphanages a chance to experience, from time to time, a few hours of love from their host families," Florent Niama, an official within the Ministry of Family and Social Affairs, said. The project marks the beginning of a broader government initiative to reduce the number of street children. Niama said it was hoped that many of the families would adopt the children with whom they were paired. The ministry said 350 of the participating children came from Brazzaville and 150 from Pointe-Noire. The children selected for the programme were aged 4 to 18 years. The host families include several members of the government and parliament, diplomats, NGO workers, administrative workers, as well as ordinary citizens The public information officer for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), Luce Saint-Pierre, told IRIN: "The international community needs to mobilise funds for the future. The situation is worrying and at the moment UNICEF can only strive to research long-term solutions for the problem." UNICEF estimates there are 137,599 orphans under 15 years old in the Congo. Many of these children have been orphaned as a result of wars that have ravaged the country in recent years. The continuing HIV/AIDS pandemic has also been a factor. In 2002, a national programme to combat HIV/AIDS put the number of children orphaned by the pandemic at 64,000. UNICEF says there are currently some 5,000-street children in the country, 3,000 of whom are in the port town of Pointe-Noire.