Street children in Kathmandu

More than 5 thousand children are toiling on the street in many cities of Nepal, mainly in Kathmandu, Pokhara, Dharan, Biratnagar and Butwal. These street children pass their days collecting scraps and plastics thrown away by people and nights on the footpaths.

There is a far greater proportion of boys than girls among the street children. The major cause of this imbalance is that as boys end up on the streets sniffing chemicals and getting high in order to forget hunger, whereas girls are even more susceptible and are duped into sexual exploitation or trafficked to neighboring India for prostitution.

Most of them are victims of family abuses so they run away from the villages nearby to go to the city. Gathered in small groups not to be alone, they sniff glue for industrial and domestic use; an alternative and extremely cheap drug (about 20 cents).