Vulnerable Girls in the Streets of Dhaka

This story portrays a grim picture of street girls in the city areas of Bangladesh. Increasingly girl children are abandoned and forgotten in busy streets of the flourishing cities. They live on their own by selling water bottles, candies, flowers who will never be picked by any child protective services. There are no mandated child protective services or shelter homes in Bangladesh for abandoned children. In the recent months, more children became homeless as the Interim Government demolished slums and illegal establishments without any thought for rehabilitation. Watch a video report by Reuters presented on February 27, 2007: Poverty Grips Bangladesh (nuvu.tv).

Just imagine the lives of the girls on the streets as 70% of them will be ultimately sexually abused, one survey revealed. As one report indicates the horrible condition of these children, "a 2005 survey by Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation on sexual activity among street girls underscored that street girls are extremely vulnerable to sexual abuse and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). More than half of the boys interviewed and more than three quarters of the girls, including 20 percent of those under fifteen, admitted they were sexually active. Sixty-one percent of the boys said they had forced a girl to have sex with them". Read this article from NFB.