Team announced to reduce growing number of street children

The Republic of Congo's (ROC) Ministry of Social Affairs announced on Saturday that it would set up a committee to coordinate activities aimed at rehabilitating street children, whose numbers have increased dramatically over the last 10 years. "The situation has become worrying in Congo, and the solution to the problem will involve educating and reevaluating the family," participants agreed at a meeting held in the capital, Brazzaville. Government officials and NGO representatives, including officers from the UN Children's Fund and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), discussed ways of getting children off the streets during Saturday’s meeting. Participants said the number of street children in the country went up from 152 in 1992 to about 1,000 in 2002. More than 2,000 were recorded in urban areas in 2004. Life is often difficult for these children, who range from between 10 and 18-years-old. Girls are at a high risk of sexual abuse. REIPER, a network of 10 NGOs that deals with the rehabilitation of street children, presented their concerns to the government during the meeting. "One of the first strategies to get the children back to a normal life is getting in touch with them," Joseph Bikié Likibi, REIPER's coordinator, said. "We invite them to our centre where the process of rehabilitation begins." Likibi said the centre recognised that the family was the ideal environment for a child's growth, but "if the rehabilitated child does not have a family, we keep such children for a certain time until we find a substitute family to place them in." He said the government was aware that some of the street children in Brazzaville were from Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The two cities, separated by the River Congo, are reputed to be the closest geographically in the world. The ROC's government called for an inter-governmental dialogue between the two Congos to check the increase of street children. "If we have children in the street, it is because the families are not structured any more," Emilienne Raoul, the minister for social affairs, human action and family, said. UNESCO's representative in the country, Robertine Raonimahary, said the marginalized, disadvantaged and vulnerable children were an important focus in UNESCO's policy. "We work on the causes [of their vulnerability], in particular poverty," she said. "This situation of poverty is crucial in post-conflict countries, for example Congo, which is in a transitional development phase."