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HIV/AIDS and Sexual Health

My Lords, I speak in this brief intervention as chair of the All-Party Group on Street Children. My noble friend Lady Northover has already referred to the situation of street children and child soldiers in the DRC and I should like to highlight the situation facing that particularly high-risk group. The Consortium for Street Children is the umbrella body for 45 UK-based charities working or supporting work with street children in 76 countries throughout the world. In 2005, its members agreed that one of the most serious situations facing street children was HIV/AIDS. The consortium has made that one of its key issues for work in the next five years. With that in mind, the consortium sent a small team to the world AIDS conference in Toronto. The consortium agrees with the conclusions from the youth group at the conference that there needs to be more representation of youth from marginalised groups including street-involved youth. The conference notes on outreach and prevention among marginalised groups contain no mention of street children. On the whole they are not covered by the term ““orphans”” because, although they may be street-working and street-living, they have families. They are not mentioned in the notes but they are among the highest risk groups for a number of reasons including drugs, sex at an early age, and, crucially, lack of awareness. A number of surveys have been carried out and I shall mention just a few. In 2001, Médecins du Monde, from Sweden, conducted a survey in the Russian city of St Petersburg among a sample group of 1,200 street children. It showed that 67 per cent of the children tested HIV positive. A survey in India, where some children had to turn to prostitution to survive, estimated that 90 per cent of the street children in Mumbai were sexually active. The survey was conducted by a group of Indian NGOs that comprise the HIV/AIDS forum there. Awareness of the disease among that group of children in India was similarly astoundingly lacking. A study by UNICEF in Namibia in 2004 found that less than 50 per cent of street children sampled had heard of the disease at all, in a country where a high proportion of the adult population are infected. The picture is particularly depressing because, in 1992, an adviser to the Pan American Health Organisation wrote: "““we are confronted by the fact that one particular subpopulation, that of homeless youth, has received little attention in regard to their risk of exposure to HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases … Street youth are often not included in traditional institutional networks for providing health care and social services””." Today, 14 years later, the situation has not changed and street children world-wide continue to have little or no access to HIV/AIDS services. As the Government look to contribute to programmes, regardless of whether they are global or bilateral, they must bear in mind that situation and develop policies to address it. DfID currently allocates a percentage of the£150 million it will spend to meeting the needs of orphans and other children. But will it ensure that street children are included and money is specifically allocated to meet their needs? It is crucial that HIV/AIDS education programmes reach out to street children and that donor Governments such as ours support the development of prevention, care and treatment services to be delivered to those children in the most appropriate way by the Governments of those countries. There is often a mountain to be climbed in persuading the Governments of various countries of the crucial need to include street children in the provision of other services such as education. The situation regarding HIV/AIDS is a little different because the case can be strongly made that by not including street children in all those programmes the effects will spread rapidly to the rest of the population. I appreciate that a health Minister is to respondto this debate, but I hope he will encourage his colleagues in DfID to look at these issues, particularly because the world AIDS conference did not address this sector. An urgent reply is needed.