Government Assistance to Charities for Organizing Street Children in Tehran

The director general of Welfare Organization of Tehran Province announced the 'organization' of working and street children after the end of Ramadan with the participation of the government, charities, and the private sector. Ahmad Delbari stated on Saturday, July 12, to the IRIB news agency that the organization of these children will be carried out with the participation of the private sector, as 'the government alone cannot' cover them. He added that in this plan, which is expected to be approved soon by the Tehran governorate, charities can organize working and street children by receiving government subsidies. According to this official, this subsidy, the amount of which has not yet been announced, is intended to be paid to charitable institutions as 'part of the costs of caring for street children.' Currently, 17 associations supporting working and street children have been registered in Tehran Province, and according to Ahmad Delbari, there are about five to six thousand working and street children in this province. Mr. Delbari also added that 'this number of associations is not enough to organize working children, and benevolent people must participate seriously in this regard.' In recent years, working and street children have become one of the social anomalies in large cities in Iran, especially in Tehran. These children, according to official and unofficial reports, are exposed to many social harms, and no fundamental action has been taken to organize them so far. Research results from the Welfare Organization of Iran in December 2014 showed that '17.3%' of 'street children' had consumed alcohol at least once in their lives. The report also stated that the average age of starting sexual relations among street girls is '12 and a half years' and among street boys is '13 years and seven months.' At that time, it was also reported that District 2 of Tehran had the highest prevalence of street children with 24.5%, District 12 with 18%, and District 1 with 11.1%. Minou Mohraz, head of the AIDS Research Center in Iran, stated in September of that year that the reason for the higher incidence of AIDS among working children—whether girls or boys—is due to sexual assault against them.