You
see them working and begging on market places, hanging round
railway stations, labouring in the harvest fields.
They should be in school but poverty, neglect or trouble at
home has obliged them to fend for themselves. They are Central
Asia’s forgotten children.
When more than half the population lives below the poverty line,
when unemployment is astronomical, when drug and alcohol abuse
are prevalent, when crime is rising, and going to school for
many is unaffordable, the consequences for children are predictable.
Karakol, the capital of Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan’s easternmost
province, has all of those things and other worrying signs.
Sometimes, reports the Red Crescent, youngsters are simply abandoned.
“What chance do they have without care and education?”
asks Jypara Kadyralieva, the organization’s provincial
chairlady.
Her Issyk-Kul branch runs a school for underprivileged children
who would otherwise not attend one.
Part of a programme to develop community services supported
by the Netherlands Red Cross, it was begun for Karakol’s
street children but the need is such that its doors are now
open to any child in trouble.
Sixteen-year-old Azamat Soronbaev is in trouble. So are his
five brothers and sisters, Aigul, 18, Aida, 14, Nargiza, 12,
Altynbek, 10, and five-year-old Almaz.
Their unemployed father has disappeared and their mother, an
alcoholic, is serving a six-year prison sentence for stealing
a saddle, apparently while she was drunk.
All but Almaz attended the Red Crescent school but as their
poverty deepened the older children dropped out to earn the
money they need to survive.
Nargiza and Altynbek stayed on but for the past few days they,
too, have been missing from the classroom. Jypara Kadyralieva
goes in search of them in a rundown apartment building in one
of the rougher corners of town.
It is five past seven in the evening and Azamat has just come
home. He is dirty and tired after a 12-hour day in a potato
field that has earned him 50 soms, around a dollar and a quarter.
It is seasonal work and he’s working every hour he can.
Nargiza and Altynbek sit next to him. They are quiet, closed
children and Altynbek is known for aggressive outbursts at school.
Nargiza has a wound on her leg from a fall but it isn’t
the only reason for her absence.
The children have no winter clothes or a decent pair of shoes
to put on and it has been too cold and wet to leave home.
Kadyralieva tells them to come tomorrow and bring their eldest
sister with them. A doctor will see to Nargiza’s leg and
they can select warm clothes from Red Crescent stocks to get
all five through the winter.
“And what about you?” she asks Azamat. “Will
we see you back in school?” The boy did attend for one
full year and seemed to be doing well.
But no. He and the older girls must work. They need money for
food and to pay something off their electricity bill. The power
company is threatening to cut them off just as winter is starting.
Keeping children in school is an ongoing challenge for the Issyk-Kul
Red Crescent. Sometimes the answer is obvious. Street children
stay if there is something to eat because most of the time they
are hungry. Other problems run much deeper.
The school occupies three rooms of a Red Crescent headquarters
complex where, as well as free education, poor children can
get medical care, use of a bathhouse and laundry, and, like
Nargiza, second-hand clothing.
The syllabus is a basic one, approved by the Ministry of Education,
and designed to lead children, if they wish, into the normal
school system.
Aged from six to 16 at present, most of the children have had
no previous schooling. The $20 or more a year that school costs
can amount to elsewhere was beyond the reach of their parents.
Lessons in reading, writing and arithmetic, and the life skills
children need to progress, consequently move at a modest pace.
“They need more time than other children,” teacher
Vika Harchenko, 25, explains, “What you might teach in
one lesson you may need two or three for here. Every child is
different and the approach must be individual.”
All children, however, have dreams. Elena, 15, who dropped out
of the state school system, has more than made up for two lost
years. She’s a bubbly little blonde with laughing eyes.
“I want to go to high school and university. I want to
be a student,” she says. “I want …”
She stops to think. “… to be a Russian and English
interpreter, just like this lady here.”
Living a nightmare
Some children have dreams. Some children have nightmares.
In Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, 13-year-old Saira (not her real
name) is coming to terms with a nightmare. As a street child
she was sold into prostitution and trafficked to the United
Arab Emirates.
How a child ends up alone on the streets is always a shocking
story but Saira’s reflects a growing threat from traffickers
in human beings.
Saira’s mother was in prison – she was still inside
at the time of writing – and the girl was in the care
of her grandmother. When the grandmother became extremely ill
Saira was forced to care for herself and very soon landed in
trouble.
One day a woman approached her. She was kind and the girl, then
11, poured out her heart. The woman came up with a solution.
Good jobs could be found in the Emirates, she said, by a girl
with her intelligence, and in no time at all she could earn
enough to come back and get her mother out of prison.
Suffice to say the next 12 months left the little girl traumatized
and an inhuman trade, thought to be worth between US$5 and 7
billion a year to organized crime worldwide, claimed another
victim.
She was eventually found in a UAE gaol by the International
Organization for Migration, a leading player in the global response
to trafficking, and is today in a Bishkek home for the rehabilitation
of street children.
Other case stories from the state-run centre the Kyrgyz Red
Crescent assists, tell of abandonment and of children running
from domestic horror.
There are thought to be around 2,500 youngsters living on the
streets of Bishkek, more than half from other parts of the country.
As long as the socio-economic crisis prevails the numbers will
go on climbing, warns the Red Crescent’s city chairlady,
Natalya Bibikova.
Jypara Kadyralieva concurs. Back in Issyk-Kul she is looking
for donors to support a street children crisis centre, a shelter
providing food and a bed, and medical and psychological care.
Stigma of handicap
The evidence is anecdotal but across Central Asia a growing
number of physically and mentally challenged children are also
reported to be suffering. They are not on the streets.
Often they are prisoners in their own homes.
The authorities have schools and institutions specially for
the handicapped. There are financial allowances for them. But
these cash-strapped states are unable to provide enough.
Moreover, the number of youngsters is probably underestimated.
The authorities argue that when financial support is available
all parents will register handicapped children.
What that fails to acknowledge is the stigma surrounding handicaps,
particularly mental ones, and the fear of discrimination.
In Shabat, a district of Khorezm province, western Uzbekistan,
Red Crescent representative Shukhrat Hudoyarov tells how shame
takes its toll. “People are afraid of gossip,” he
says.
“If one child is mentally handicapped, the stigma may
affect the others. It may mean they are less marriageable because
if one child in a family has a handicap others may be suspected
of having a problem as well. It is an appalling way for people
to think but they do.”
The consequence is that some challenged children are kept quietly
at home.
What also worries the Red Crescent is the inaccessibility of
services. Take the town of Chirchik, 35 kilometres from Tashkent
where poor handicapped youngsters are marginalized. Their parents
cannot afford the state’s provincial care, and often it
is far away.
The welfare of handicapped children is an Uzbek Red Crescent
priority and it has a number of centres around the country.
Chirchik is the newest of them providing free day care, education
and medical service. Part of a branch development programme
supported by the Netherlands Red Cross, it helps vulnerable
children who get no assistance elsewhere.
Twelve-year-old Kurba is mentally challenged and before the
Red Crescent opened its doors had never been in a classroom.
Conventional schools would not enrol her so her mother kept
her at home.
Although her speech is slow and awkward, she is eager to learn,
and absorbed by reading and writing lessons. But the important
thing, say her teachers, is to bring her out of her isolation.
What matters most in Kurba’s young life is the feeling
she can participate, in a world which until now has rejected
her.
Next to her sits Zukrat. He is five. He has problems with his
heart and needs surgery. His mother has no money for it. Divorced
and bringing up five children, she struggles to make ends meet
and cannot afford a place for her son in a specialized kindergarten,
either.
Like Kurba, if Zukrat wasn’t here he would be at home,
confined within walls as much as if he were in prison.
Reports of handicapped children being shunned are also common.
Other youngsters’ parents discourage contact and prevent
them playing together. Breaking down such social walls always
has been a goal of the Uzbek Red Crescent, says Prof Michael
Kremkov, the organization’s vice chairman.
A Red Crescent centre for social and psychological rehabilitation
at Yangiyul, near Tashkent, shows the way. Contact with non-challenged
children is part of the programme and many handicapped youngsters
are helped develop to the point where they can enter normal
schools.
A forgotten child, Prof Kremkov argues, is a forgotten national
asset.
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Street
children at a market place in Karakol. Poverty, neglect
or trouble at home has forced many children to fend for
themselves(p11723)
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Kyrgyz
Red Crescent school in Karakol for underprivileged children
children was originally begun for street children but
now helps any child in trouble (p11725)
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Keeping
children in school is an ongoing challenge for the Red
Crescent. As well as education, it offers food as an incentive
to stay on (p11727)
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An
Uzbek mother and her disabled son. Because of the stigma
attached to having a handicapped child, many are virtual
prisoners in their own homes (p11729)
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The
welfare of handicapped children is an Uzbek Red Crescent
priority. This Netherlands Red Cross-supported centre
in Chirchik offers them free day care, education and a
medical service (p11730)
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