The Context

Ethiopia is one of the world's poorest countries, beset by chronic poverty, food insecurity, a growing HIV and AIDS crisis, and a lack of basic services such as health and education. These challenges serve to destabilise families and communities, destroying traditional support structures for children, who are most affected. Estimates show that there are 6 million orphans in Ethiopia, and more than half a million of these were orphaned as a result of AIDS. Almost 5 million school age children are not in school, more than 3 million of whom are girls. Children are being forced to live and work on the streets of towns and cities such as the capital Addis Ababa. These children’s survival and development is at risk, as they face being abused and exploited. The commercial sexual exploitation of children is increasing, and estimates show that 95% of girls living on the street of Addis have been sexually exploited. Many girls are fleeing forced early marriage in rural areas and the numbers of boys being sexually abused and exploited is also increasing. As a result children are even more susceptible to contracting HIV and a lack of basic services and protection for children means that children living and working on the streets have limited access to education, shelter and health facilities to mitigate these circumstances.

The Work

CHAD-ET in partnership with ChildHope is in the first year of a 5 year Plan, supported by a Strategic Grant from Comic Relief. This grant will be used to: i) reach larger numbers of vulnerable children to ensure their protection, rehabilitation, increased access to basic services and prevention of HIV/AIDS and sexual exploitation; ii) ensure that higher quality and sustainable services for street and vulnerable children are implemented by other providers, through building their capacity and working with them to influence policy; iii) increase children’s participation, protection and empowerment in all CHAD-ET’s work; iv) develop innovative approaches to meet the needs of the hardest to reach groups of street children, including sexually exploited girls and boys, through undertaking research. Positive changes in attitudes will be seen at community and government level and the needs of street and working children will be better understood and responded to.

CHAD-ET and ChildHope are working specifically to:

• Implement a programme to prevent the sexual abuse and exploitation of girls from Debra Tabor in Amhara State and reduce the practice of forced early marriage.
• Learn from CHAD-ET’s wider work on preventing the sexual abuse and exploitation of girls and to develop new strategies for supporting girls and boys who are victims of sexual abuse and exploitation.
• Strengthen CHAD-ET’s HIV and AIDS prevention and support work through strengthening informal fostering of AIDS orphans and promoting and institutionalising child protection.
• Improving the levels of children’s participation and child protection in all areas of CHAD-ET’s work
• Building regional networks for joint work and advocacy and supporting other civil society organisations and government agencies so they can deliver better services to street and vulnerable children. 

This is being done by:

• Building the capacity of children, the community and local government agencies to implement strategies to prevent sexual abuse and forced early marriage and to protect and reintegrate girls who have migrated to the cities.
• Designing an evaluation of CHAD-ET’s sexual abuse prevention programme in Kombolcha and developing a baseline for work in Debra Tabor.
• Research on informal fostering approaches implemented by other organisations and conducting a fostering pilot project.
• Working alongside children to provide them with opportunities to be actively involved in developing and implementing activities, monitoring and learning.  Supporting them to develop the relevant skills to enable their full participation. 
• Working with the local funeral societies and other organisations to build their capacity to run drop-in centres for street children. Advocacy with these organisations to take long term responsibility for services to vulnerable children. 

CHAD-ET will also do the following:

• Provide opportunities for practical vocational training specifically tailored to the needs of street children and meeting the demands of the employment sector.
• Run temporary shelters to protect sexually abused and exploited girls as a step towards family reintegration.
• Train and support the police so that they are in a better position to protect children at risk of sexual exploitation.
• Challenge stigma and discrimination of street and vulnerable children through raising awareness on issues such as child rights, sexual abuse and exploitation and HIV & AIDS with communities,  local organisations and government agencies through radio debates, public events, campaigns, and workshops.

Challenges & Lessons Learnt:

• Trying to change attitudes towards early marriage, especially in rural areas, and reducing the stigma that persists towards sexually abused girls is a big challenge. 
• It is imperative to get the support of the local community and elders, who can mobilise much more effectively to promote and defend children’s rights in the long term.

• Although it is a continuous challenge to get the police and the judiciary onboard, it is one worth pursuing in order to ensure that the police follow-up cases of abuse and that perpetrators of abuse are brought to justice.
• We have learnt from our previous work the importance of addressing the issues which cause unsafe migration of orphans and vulnerable children to the streets.  If these issues remain unchallenged, then the rise in unaccompanied and unsupported children in urban centres will continue to grow unchecked

Please note that the photos shown are not of the children written about and the names have been changed in order to protect the children’s identity.