How ActionAid protects forgotten children
Millions of children around the world live and work on the streets as a direct result of poverty. With nowhere to call home, and no one to care for them, many are forced to sleep in alleyways or on dangerous railway platforms.
These are the most vulnerable and marginalised children in the world, at risk of violence, sexual abuse, forced labour and human trafficking.
But ActionAid is working to keep these forgotten girls and boys safe — and you can help.
Just £7 a month could make sure a child has somewhere safe to sleep. Not just tonight, but every night.
What ActionAid does
Our locally recruited staff in countries where we work understand the threats and challenges children face.
If they are in immediate danger, we provide shelters where children can access food, healthcare, counselling and education.
Long term, our local staff work with communities to overcome the poverty and injustice that causes children to become homeless.
Poroshmoni, 8, lives in the slums of Dhaka. Photo: Sharron Lovell/ActionAid
Getting girls off the streets of Dhaka
Poroshmoni, 8, lives in the slums of Dhaka and was attacked on her way home. She is now a day student at an ActionAid-funded safe house.
"Girls are facing lots of problems on the street," says Poroshmoni. "I went to my friend's house nearby to play with her. At 7pm I was coming home.
"That area becomes silent and dark after sunset because there are no lights on the streets.
So one boy stopped me on my way and tried to pick me up. I was scared and started screaming. Somehow I managed to escape and save my life. When my mother heard me screaming she came out of the house and I ran to her."
“Now I am scared to move alone after evening,” adds Poroshmoni. “If someone took me, I'd never see my mother and friends. When I think about this, I feel bad.”
Poroshmoni now also spends her afternoons and early evenings at Happy Homes; doing homework and playing with her friends.
She loves to sing and to dance. She told us: "I can study well, eat properly and can play with many children."
8-year-old Reshma was living in a house made of brick and mud before the earthquakes in Nepal. It was completely destroyed.
Sabin Shrestha/ActionAid
Child trafficking in Nepal
After the Nepal earthquakes in 2015, thousands of young girls lost their homes and families, making them vulnerable targets for sex traffickers.
Lured to India with the promise of a better life, they’ll instead be forced into a life of hard labour and exploitative sex work.
Since the earthquakes ActionAid has been working in Nepal to support affected communities, including by providing safe spaces for women and children, to protect them from threats to their wellbeing.
By helping communities to recover and rebuilding homes and schools, we are helping families to re-establish their livelihoods, reducing poverty and keeping girls safe from harm.
Sexual abuse, exploitation and violence
- In 2016, it was estimated one million children worldwide were subjected to commercial sexual exploitation, including prostitution or pornography.1
- It is estimated that around 120 million girls under the age of 20 (about one in 10) have been subjected to forced sexual intercourse or other forced sexual acts.2
- In Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, an estimated two million children live in the slums and on the streets, where girls are particularly vulnerable to harassment, sexual violence and prostitution.
Human trafficking: a hidden problem
By its very nature, human trafficking – especially child trafficking - is not done in public, so the true scale of the problem is unknown.
But from 45 years experience working with our local staff and partners, we know that trafficking happens in countries, cities, towns and rural areas all over the world.
- Since 2003, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has detected 225,000 victims of trafficking worldwide. In 2016, a peak of more than 24,000 victims were recorded. This number, however, is likely to be the tip of the iceberg, as most trafficking goes undetected.3
- It is estimated that around 30% of trafficking victims are children, and 23% are girls.
- However, in some parts of Africa and Southeast Asia's Mekong region, children are the majority (up to 100% in parts of West Africa).4
- Of those subjected to trafficking, 59% were trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation.
Child trafficking happens commonly after a disaster strikes, or if a country is experiencing civil war, drought, famine, or protracted poverty. Girls are particularly at risk of sex trafficking at those times.
UN figures suggest that 7,000 women and girls are trafficked out of Nepal to India every year.5
Child labour in Ghana
It is estimated that 1.9 million children in Ghana are trapped in child labour - about 22% of all children aged five to 17.6
Child labour is particular pronounced in the poorest regions, including the Upper East region, where children are often removed from school to take part in economic activities, like farming.
Not only can this work seriously endanger children's health and safety, but it compromises children’s ability to enrol and stay in school, deepening the cycle of poverty for generations.
ActionAid and our partners in Ghana are working to train communities about the harmful effects of child labour, engaging parents and youth groups.
We also provide essentials like school uniforms, bags and books, which help children who have left school to return to the classroom.
11-year-old Joyce is from northern Ghana, where ActionAid is supporting children at risk of forced labour, child marriage and abduction
Ruth McDowall/ActionAid
Child exploitation and labour
Missing out on an education, healthcare and proper nutrition, child workers are denied their right to a childhood. With no chance to play and exposed to exploitation, they are forced to grow up much too fast.
- 152 million children are subject to child labour around the world, accounting for almost one in ten children around the world.7
- Almost half, 73 million, are classified as working in hazardous child labour.
- 72 million child labourers are in Africa, meaning one in five (19.6%) children in Africa are in child labour.
In many countries, parents may send their children, especially daughters, to work, or to another country through a ‘trusted guardian’ because they physically can’t provide for them, and they believe their child will better off with at least a roof over their head and enough to eat.
Sometimes the whole family are forced into work, or 'bonded labour', for little or no pay, in dangerous conditions.
How you can help
When you give a regular gift to ActionAid, you can help us to be there for forgotten children in the world's poorest countries.
You could help to provide a safe home for a child at risk of abuse, getting them out of danger and off the streets.
And you could help to address the root causes of poverty around the world, so that children can get an education, learn about their rights, and escape poverty for good.
Page updated 5 October 2022
