In Pictures, Kigali Experiencing Increase of Street Children In Numbers.Who Cares?

Kigali is peaceful today because the street children are still children. Today they are begging, practically requesting their donors to willingly handover the loose change in their possession. When the sense of frustration develops, they may use ‘reasonable force’ so to say in police speak.

Throughout the year, hundreds of men, women, and children—many of them street children, commercial sex workers, or street hawkers—were detained unlawfully, without charge or trial, in very poor conditions in an unrecognized detention center commonly known as Kwa Kabuga, in the Gikondo area of Kigali. Many were beaten by police, or by other detainees in the presence of police.

Although no official statistics have been collated, it is estimated by various NGO’s that there are between 10,000 and 15,000 children who live on the streets in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. Most of these do not actually sleep on the streets at nighttime, because there is a high risk that they will be killed, or beaten. Many live in underground big pipes, or share a small mud hut with some older street children.

Rwandan authorities have come under fire for forcibly rounding up hundreds of street children in the capital, Kigali, ahead of an African leaders summit.
Below are few images of Kigali steet Children and the video of Human Rights Watch World Report 2015 - Events of 2014

Numbers of street Children in Kigali in Increasing,