Cause Of Child Beggars Children And Young People Essay
Child exploitation is defined as taking a child’s advantages in an unfairly manner. It is a problem all of us know much of or have heard much about. Sexual abuse, pornography, kidnapping children and selling children into prostitution, child beggars are examples of child exploitation (Judy H. Wright, 2006). Child beggar is a massive problem in all countries of the world. They often come shoeless, dressed in dirty, scruffy, smelly clothes. It is heart-rending to see little children begging on busy roads. They often scrounge for alms all over the city. They are everywhere, at traffic signals, streets, night markets, peering into vehicle windows, bedraggled, haggard and breaking into a sudden smile when a few coins are dropped into their palms. Sometimes they would narrate and tell a pathetic story to collect more money.
Child beggars are swarmed around us, and often they bearing the marks of abuse, these children work all day, only to earn barely enough to live on. The earnings that they make, child beggars often forced to surrender their wages to the “boss” who will take their money and rob them of their dignity, shoving them right back into never-ending cycle of begging. How much they earn will be the consequences of their marks of abuse. The problem of child beggars is longstanding. What causes this issue? Poverty is the primary cause of this issue. It is claimed that it is poverty that makes parents send their children to prostitute, it is the poverty that make parents sell their children for child trafficking, it is the poverty that makes parents deny their children education and make them work day and night. All forms of child exploitation linked to poverty (xxx). Children from poor families are living in fragile environments, with no clean water supplies and no food. They are forced to work or beg for money to supplement household income. If they didn’t choose to beg for money, for girls, they might fall victim to sexual and physical abuse by family members.
Poverty results in a large number of children not getting the opportunity to join school. They missed the chances to being educated because of poverty. Many poor countries have over the years developed innovative and creative programmes to curb poverty but the programmes always failed. Some NGOs have proposed that the government should fix a monthly grant for the deserving beggars so that the problem could be solved permanently. However, it always failed (xxx).
Apart from that, parents are the secondary cause of child beggars. They play a vital role in numbers of child beggars increasing rapidly. Children brought out to crowded places, but parents did not pay attention on their child give human trafficking organization good opportunity to take away their children and sent to nowhere, make them as child beggars. Many of these children are victimized by human trafficking organization. Children and toddlers are also used as beggars to extract money from pity-filled passersby. In order to elicit sympathy to collect more money, children usually have one or more of their limbs cruelly amputated. Parents are no concern on their child’s attitude and action make the situation worse. Child is easy to attract by something for example food or toys. If a child is targeted by a trafficking organization, the person will attracts the child with food, sweets, or toys. If every parents pay attention and hold their children’s hands tight when they are in crowded places, it will have no chance for others to take away their child.
Furthermore, in poor countries, children are sold by parents to the trade to attain basic living necessities. Parents shows irresponsibility attitude because they didn’t bother what will happen to their child after selling off to these organization. Also, in rural area, where many parents are illiterate, some organization set the title of bringing their child out from the town to city to have education, better knowledge in order to live better. But after the organization took away their child, parents didn’t bother or care much what will happen to their child or where are they being send. These happens because lack of protection of parents on their children.
In addition, uncontrolled birth is also the cause of child beggars. Children from poor family, that their parents have no income, they usually send their children to beg or even sell them off. Children become profitable tool for supporting family life. Unplanned and uncontrolled birth brings trouble to poor family which they feel that they have too many children, and it is fine for them to sell some of their child to collect money and have better living for the elderly children. It is certainly unfair for these children as it is not their fault to be the burden of the family members. It is the uncontrolled birth that causes parents selling off their child, therefore increase numbers of child beggars.
Besides that, increasing numbers of trafficking organization causes increase numbers of child beggars. These human trafficking organizations are cold hearted. They organized crime target children result in children become victims of child trafficking and forced begging. Some of the organization even established working patterns, ‘sales strategies’ to makes child beggars collects more money. According to The Week “Where are our kids?” July 19th, 2009), one child goes missing every hour in Delhi while the police avoid accountability by registering only 20% of missing cases. Most of the missing children are from families without financial resources to follow-up on the cases (xxx).
Last but not least, another cause of child beggars is the lack of free, compulsory education. According to Elena Arnal, parental education plays an important role. Educated parents are less likely to send their children off or selling them off than non-educated parents (xxx). In poor countries, peoples mostly are illiterate. Parents didn’t know they should send their children to schools. Despite the fact that The Child Rights Act (2003: Section 1) that stated a child must join schools when they are at suitable age, in poor family that has no income, they don’t have enough money to buy food and support the livings; therefore, they will just ignore the laws and send them children to beg for money. Forced begging brings continuous derivation on the children who do not see their families, do not go to school and never has the chance to rest. Sooner or later, the children are likely to become a machines and this is definitely a very bad thing for children themselves.
In a nutshell, plenty of children become beggars because they are poor. No alms will change that; they will just make it worse. What we peoples can do is try to change the circumstances that cause their poverty (xxx). Effective operations from time to time are underway to eliminate child beggars all around the world. Children welfare organization should do something to alleviate their plight instead of just giving money to child beggars. Besides that, it is a must to report to the authorities when you see child beggars hanging at the streets. Missing children exploited as child beggars or drug smugglers, these cases have been happening in all countries. To avoid unfortunate cases from happening, everyone have great responsibility.
