Following the death of his parents when he was just four, Samlain Chey, now 22, found himself living on the streets along the river near the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. Until he met a social worker from Mith Samlanh.
In Dakar, urban commuters are familiar with kids as young as five years old begging on street corners at all hours of the day or the night, with torn, dirty clothes, collecting donations in an empty tin can.
On a street corner in downtown Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital city, 12-year-old Kaita sits with a friend on a peeling steel railing watching the headlights of motorbikes cruising through the otherwise silent streets. It is after midnight, and motionless human forms lie curled up in doorways or stretched out on pavements nearby. For Kaita, these streets are home, and have been for almost six years.
Oblivious to the cloud of dust they have kicked up in just a few minutes, panting and sweating, moving lithely, this way, then that, they jostle the ball smoothly until one team scores a goal.
Non-governmental organisations in Mexico are presenting a complaint Friday Nov. 2 before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights about government mistreatment and "social cleansing" of thousands of people living on the street in several of the country's cities.
Arrayed in colourful garments they have made themselves, six teenagers who used to be street kids in Fortaleza, in northeast Brazil, visited this southern Spanish city to recount their life experiences and awaken solidarity.