Closing the gap between rights and realities for children and youth in urban Brazil: Reflections on a Brazilian project to improve policies for street children

Summary

Closing the gap between rights and realities for children and youth in urban Brazil: Reflections on a Brazilian project to improve policies for street children

This report describes a successful attempt in the city of Rio de Janeiro and several other cities in Brazil to use the federally mandated system of Children’s Rights Councils to promulgate, for the first time, policies to help children “in the situation of the streets”. Such children are ubiquitous in urban Brazil.

While a few of them spend all their lives on the streets, most them spend their days on the street hustling to earn small amounts of loose change but spend their nights elsewhere, most of them with family or friends. But their presence on the streets loosens their connections to home, school, and community and makes it almost impossible for them to join main stream society.

The project describes was designed in the first instance for a Brazilian audience but a number of the underlying issues that surfaced in the work confront children and youth, policy makers, and concerned citizens in many other countries. For this reason we have written this English language account of the project, describing the opportunities and challenges that continue to confront the most vulnerable children.