STREET CHILDREN IN ADDIS ABABA: EXPLORING POLICY FRAMEWORK FOR INTERVENTIONS

Abstract

This research was initiated to explore the policy framework of interventions established to address the problems of street children in Addis Ababa. In line with this, the manner in which these interventions are established and governed; the challenges of administering them without a comprehensive policy; factors that may hinder the formulation of comprehensive policy and a proposed policy options were aimed to be explored. To achieve these objectives, different type of data collection methods were used. These include; survey questionnaire, key informant interview and document analysis. The survey questionnaire was filled by 181 respondents selected through the use of convenience sampling technique. Out of which 145 of them were street children, 20 officials/experts were from NGOs and 16 were from officials/experts of the government bureaus. Key informant interviews were conducted with selected individuals from the three groups. The data collected through the above methods was analyzed and presented descriptively. The findings revealed that: the city administration has been facing a number of challenges in administering the interventions on the street children in the absence of comprehensive city wide policy. These include: lack of uniform mechanisms of supervision, duplication of efforts and wastage of resources. Besides, there are major factors and assumptions that hindered the formulation of city wide policy. Factors such as lack of awareness among the major stakeholder on the magnitude and scope of the problem: lack of commitment and shortage of resource in the one hand, and strong believes on the broader international, national and sectoral policies as enough and adequate to address the problem on the other, are found to be the major impediment for policy formulation. Finally, the proposed policy option, which is initiated, based on the right based and holistic approach and the child friendly city initiative, has found a massive support from the respondents. Hence, the proposed policy option has been presented as a mechanism to address the aforementioned challenges in administering the interventions. Besides, additional ways of improving the existing situation have been indicated. These include; awareness creation on the problem, improving the resource base of the city administration and creation of uniform transparency and accountability mechanisms