Nour Merza - AlJazeera Talk
 The three-year-old boy in Samira's arms was so filthy that she had to wrap him up in her bed sheets. Dirt caked his hair and face, leaving only his drugged eyes exposed. He wouldn’t stop crying.
Samira had spotted the boy a few hours earlier, wandering aimlessly in the street below her apartment window. Realizing he was alone, Samira took him to the local police station, where, to her surprise, she was told to keep him. The boy was just one of the countless children left to fend for themselves on the streets of Egypt.
Street children have long plagued Egyptian society, and are, as the spokesperson for Egypt’s Health Ministry Abdel Rahman Shahin put it, “our national shame.” While estimates range from 200,000 to as many as 2 million, there are no official statistics on the number of street children in the country. The government blames the kids’ lack of identification and high mobility for their inability to get a grip on the situation.
These children end up on the street for a variety of reasons; mainly poverty, family breakups, difficulties in school and abuse. Samira’s boy was left on the street because his mother didn’t have enough money to support him along with her drug addiction.
 Alone in the industrialized hearts of Egypt’s cities, street children go into survival mode, doing whatever it takes to stay alive. Some steal or beg, while others sell cheap goods for older gang leaders, who give them a percentage of their earnings. Many prostitute themselves for basic needs, ranging from police protection to a sandwich.
The Egyptian public has long stigmatized street children, making it hard to gather support for projects that deal with them. In fact, it was only in 1996 that the government acknowledged street children as victims of parental neglect rather than criminals. And only after Suzanne Mubarak’s interest in the matter during her husband’s reelection did the government publicly promote campaigns to raise awareness about the issue.
Thankfully, not all hope is lost for Egypt’s street children. Self-interested politics aside, there are various individuals and groups working to improve the kids’ lives. Egypt’s Hope Village and the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood are pioneers in the country’s fight against this social issue. They aim to return the children to their families, put them back in school and help them find work.
These noble aims, however, cannot be accomplished without the involvement of the whole community. The government must work with local schools and NGOs, as well as international bodies, as it has with the EU through the European Neighborhood Policy. The EU’s support for Egyptian street children through this program highlights the possibilities for international cooperation on what is not just a national, but a humanitarian, crisis.
The boy Samira found is currently in one of the centers supported by the ENP. There, he is building a life very different than the one he would have led on the streets.
After days of refusing to eat anything other than bread, Samira’s boy was delighted one afternoon to discover that the word “food” encompasses so much more than the single staple he knew on the street.
He smiled as he tasted the beans on his plate, the first of what are hopefully many smiles to come.
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