Drive down any congested street in Beirut on any day and in any weather and you will see children running. It’s not the kind of running around that all kids should be doing on playgrounds, but running between fighting cars and being forced to make a living. Children so young that they can barely reach the windows of some cars. Children with dirty hands and faces, dressed in mismatched clothes and tattoos, and sometimes even barefoot. With trained eyes, they race from car to car eliminating the ones most likely to slip 1,000LL through the crack of the window. Cars with foreign license plates, expensive-looking vehicles with tinted windows, or female drivers, who are perhaps known to be a bit more compassionate, are among the common targets of these children.
Coming from outside of Lebanon and seeing the images of these desperate but fearless children begging in the streets is heartbreaking. However, after spending enough time here, you realize that these children could be part of a begging ring and because of this, you begin to dismiss them by avoiding eye contact in hopes that they will stop tapping on your window. car until the light turns green. . At this point, these children have become part of the messy ‘decoration’ that makes up the streets of Lebanon.
Drivers have adapted to these images and facts, so has the government, but ignoring this problem will not make it go away, it has only contributed to the growing social problems here. We must ask ourselves what possibilities for the future a child has when he begins his life in the lap of his begging mother who uses him as a ploy to incite the sympathy of passers-by. What role will this child play in our society when he becomes an adult after being programmed all his life to lie, manipulate, beg and steal in order to survive? We’ll find out the hard way when it’s no longer appropriate to ignore it.
It is estimated that there are more than 100,000 child laborers in Lebanon, approximately 20% are Lebanese and the rest are of foreign or mixed origin. Each of these children should be in school learning to read instead of being on the streets learning to beg. No child should be exposed to life on the streets at risk of falling into the wrong hands and something must be done about it.
Most of us have evolved to realize that expecting the government to do something will get us nowhere. The Ministry of the Interior will not intervene without a complaint filed by the child’s parents, without taking into account that in most cases it is the child’s parents who put them in these situations.
However, there are other solutions to this problem, such as NGOs, adoption and schooling; however, they receive little or no support. The NGOs that have been authorized to deal with these children lack funding, but if they could secure adequate funding, these children would have a place to sleep for the night, not on the condition that they bring enough money for the day. . These children will also have the opportunity to feel protected and develop properly; needs that their parents cannot meet. In some cases, these children are orphans and because the adoption process in Lebanon is complex, they can always remain orphans for the rest of their unfortunate lives. Since only Christian institutions in Lebanon recognize adoptions as a legal convention, it limits the possibility of providing a loving home for a child and vice versa. Finally, there should be legal enforcement of compulsory schooling regardless of background, social class, or income. Schools teach children discipline and encourage them to be a positive contribution to society rather than a criminal.
If we focus on these solutions instead of avoiding problems, all children could have the opportunity to have a normal childhood, something to which they are also entitled. However, if we continue to pretend that these children do not exist or think that there is nothing we can do about it, we will end up paying the price tomorrow because we have not addressed this issue today.
