After spending the day by collecting and then selling scrapped bottles, 10-year-old Rubel finally falls asleep on a footpath at Dhaka’s Karwan Bazar with a plastic sheet wrapped around his head. Sohan who has just entered his teens has a similar condition.
He works at a hotel and sends money to his mother who lives away from him at some other district.
The two boys are among the thousands of children who live on the streets of Dhaka, deprived of basic facilities like education, or medical treatment.
Bangladesh celebrates World Street Children’s Day on 2 October every year with pledges to ensure their safety and rights, yet the realities on the streets reveal how hollow those promises remain.
There are government-run rehabilitation centres for street children in Kamalapur and Karwan Bazar, but the number of children rehabilitated remains far below the actual need.
A 2022 survey by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics and Unicef found that 30.1% of these children live under the open sky, 71.8% cannot read or write, and 82.9% face torture or harassment from pedestrians.
Caritas Bangladesh, in a recent survey, revealed that only 5.7% of street children in Bangladesh are covered by government social security programmes; meaning a staggering 94.3% are left deprived of state support. Without safety nets or protection, these children remain highly vulnerable to exploitation, drug addiction, and crime. The study further found that 58.2% of them lack birth certificates, while 51.6% are completely excluded from formal education.
Children end up on the streets due to poverty, family breakdown, migration from villages to cities, child labour, domestic violence etc. Many are left alone. Footpaths, railway stations, and bus terminals become their homes. They suffer from malnutrition and disease. Education remains a distant dream, while sexual and physical abuse is part of their daily lives.
Although Bangladesh has the Child Rights Act 2013 and child labour is prohibited, enforcement of the laws is weak in practice. Among government initiatives, the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs and the Ministry of Social Welfare operate child rehabilitation centres.
Local Education and Economic Development Organisation (LEEDO) is a private organisation working on street children’s rehabilitation. Farhad Hossain, its executive director, says, “The biggest crisis is that society does not recognise them as human beings. The mindset of the state needs to change.”
According to him, the Child Rights Act 2013 is not being fully implemented. Laws alone are not enough; they must be executed. He believes a victim-centric approach is necessary to prevent child abuse.
On street children’s rehabilitation, Sk Khalil Al Rashid, deputy director at the Department of Social Services, told Times of Bangladesh that the government opened a “Child Protection Division” nearly two months ago. However, significant work is yet to begin.
“We are working on street children’s rehabilitation with various domestic and international NGOs, including Unicef and Save the Children,” he said.
Md Amran Khan, former assistant director of the Child Sensitive Social Protection in Bangladesh (CSPB) project under the Ministry of Social Welfare, believes that the problem cannot be solved by government alone.
According to him, the National Referral Mechanism – a living framework that engages a multi-disciplinary set of government and non-governmental actors within a system guided by a set of protocols, forms, tools, guidelines, and principles – must be effectively implemented to avoid negligence of responsibilities.
The Ministry of Social Welfare, as the lead ministry, may coordinate with other ministries, he asserts.
Amran adds, “Current projects are insufficient, so area-based initiatives are necessary. Experienced NGOs should be engaged at the field level, with the government taking responsibility for supervision and monitoring. Local community and government support should ensure the safety of field workers.”
