Touching the Lives of Darfuri Street Children

Many years of conflict have resulted an infrastructure that is in disrepair and an education system that lacks basic services. Against this backdrop, Darfur is struggling to meet the needs of its street children.

By Sharon Lukunka

Ten year old Mohamed Ali Ismail, a resident of the Nifasha camp for displaced people in North Darfur, leaves his home around 8:00 a.m. each day to earn money cleaning cars in El Fasher. Mohamed lives with his parents and four younger siblings. His family receives some financial support from his uncle, but both of his parents are not working and they cannot afford to send him to school. 

“I wash about three to four cars and take home between 5 and 10 Sudanese Pounds [US$1 to US$2] each day, but I want to go back to school,” he says. “When I get home, I give my mother the money for safekeeping for future use.”

Stories like this one are not unusual in Darfur, where 10 years of conflict have resulted in hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their home areas with no means of making a living, an infrastructure that is in disrepair, and an education system that lacks basic services. Against this backdrop, Darfur is struggling to meet the needs of its street children.

According to data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, at the end of the 1990s, around the world, 108 million children of primary school age were not enrolled in school. That number has fallen to 61 million today. To encourage this trend, the United Nations has introduced various initiatives, such as the Education First strategy, the aim of which is to ensure that every child around the world is able to go to school and receive a quality education.

On 26 September 2012, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced that the UN had secured more than US$1.5 billion in commitments for Education First. “We want children to attend primary school and to progress toward higher education that will help them to succeed in life,” said the Secretary-General in a statement announcing the programme. “We cannot stop until every child goes to school—this is our task, this is our homework.”

Read the full story in the March issue of Voices of Darfur. Download the magazine (PDF) here.

On 13 March 2010, a Darfuri child poses during a UNAMID photo shoot for a local information campaign designed to raise awareness about the issues street children face and to discourage internationals from paying them to wash cars. Photo by Albert González Farran, UNAMID.