employers and customers who harass them in various ways. On the streets,
the peer children are the best friends of street children. The children on the
street have no access to shelter, education, health, safe water, sanitation and
hygiene. The children who are enrolled in different drop-in centers have
some access to non-formal education, basic health services, water and
sanitation. The street children as well as their parents do not know much
about the Government interventions but they appreciate the interventions
of NGOs to support street children. Protecting children in the streets should
be the prime responsibility of the families. The Government needs to also
support the families and should strengthen the capacity of the local
Government to build mass awareness in the rural areas about the facts of
street life. Poverty, social exclusion, lack of access to quality education,
violence or family exploitation - whatever the reason is for a child to be on
the street - programs and policies to generate improved public and official
attitude towards such children would unlock greater opportunities for the
street children to acquire knowledge about their own rights.
2. Intra-familial Child Physical Abuse in Northern Bangladesh: An
Empirical Study
Md. Rokon Uddin, Grantee of Plan Research Grants, Plan Bangladesh
Cultural practice and conventional wisdom in Bangladesh approve the
infliction of physical pain as a mean of disciplining and upbringing children in
families. However, to ensure protection, dignity, rights, and to prevent
negative consequences on children, child physical abuse has been drawing
special concerns of global, regional and national authorities for its control
and prevention. The present research intends to conduct an empirical study
in order to identify various aspects of child physical abuse (except sexual
abuse) at the family level and to resolve some identified research gaps. The
study covers three villages from three Union Parishads, namely Khutamara,
Golmunda, and Dharmapal, at Jaldhaka upazila in Nilphamari district
comprising 150 households who have children ranging from 11 to 16 years of
age where children were the principal respondents. A multi-stage random
sampling was performed from the lists of households made for local
sanitation projects. Data collection took place during August–September
2011. The prevalence of intra-familial child physical abuse in the area under
study was very high. About 58 percent of respondents experienced physical
torture and 72 percent were victims of physical deprivation and/or neglect.
Associational factors for reasoning behind child physical abuse varies in
terms of gender, religion, occupation of parents, income of family, number of
siblings, respondent’s position among siblings and parental characteristics.
There are physical, psychological as well as behavioral consequences of the
08 4th National Knowledge Convention