Alliance outlines strategies to reduce impact of HIV on street children to UK parliament
04 December 2007
In late October 2007, the House of Lords was host to a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for street children, at which the Alliance’s senior technical advisor on children, Kate Harrison, was a speaker. The meeting addressed the impact of HIV and AIDS on street children, and the actions that UK Parliamentarians and the UK Government can take to help them.
HIV impacts heavily on children. In many cases around the world it causes them to turn to the street. This causes its own set of problems and vulnerabilities. Street children are often forced to turn to risky activities to survive, or to cope with trauma. These can include early sexual activity and drug use. Street children are also highly vulnerable to sexual abuse, including through commercial sex. The meeting addressed two key questions: the reasons for the marginalisation of street children affected by HIV, and the strategies needed for them to cope.
Why are street children marginalised in the global response to HIV?
“Nearly 25 years into the pandemic, help is reaching less than 10% of the children affected by HIV/AIDS, leaving too many children to grow up alone, grow up too fast or not grow up at all,”
Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General
Street children are marginalised even by existing responses to children affected by HIV. While street children are mentioned as a category of vulnerable children in almost all relevant national policies, they are rarely reached with support programmes. This occurs for a variety of reasons:
- focusing support on families and communities helps keep children in families, but does not reach those who have already lost them
- HIV prevention services are predominantly adult-focused, especially with regards to harm reduction approaches like condom provision and needle exchanges
- and street children are barely served by health and education services at all, let alone by the specialist education and health provision required for an adequate response to HIV.
All these problems are exacerbated by the lack of existing accurate data on street children – a poorly defined, mobile population – which makes it hard to provide convincing data on which to base interventions.
What strategies are needed?
The first and best response for children all over the world is improved HIV prevention for all, including the prevention of mother-to-child transmission. If this fails, and parents or children become HIV positive, the next key response is access to treatment. Both these responses are enshrined in the UK government’s commitment to Universal Access.
In addition, support approaches are needed to keep children together with their families and communities, as outlined in UNICEF’s Global Strategic Framework for orphans and other children affected by HIV. Children already on the street, however, need services that meet their needs, like street schools and child-friendly health services, including sexual health services, drop-in centres and night shelters. All such services should be designed for use by children and to support children’s rights.
The UK government is rightfully proud of its commitment to marginalised people and its promise to support Universal Access. These commitments and promises must be honoured.
