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II. Background on Street Children in Hanoi

I don’t want to be a shoe shiner, but I can't do anything else. I have to do it to help my family.
—Street child interviewed in December 2005

In Vietnam children who live or work on the streets are often called bui doi, which means “children of the dust,” or “the dust of life.” Street children are also referred to as “wandering” or “roaming” children.

While Vietnam’s policy of doi moi (the economic reform program launched in 1987) and its transition to a market economy have been credited with helping to lift many Vietnamese citizens out of poverty, economic reform has also been linked by Vietnamese government officials to a rise in “social evils” (te nan xa hoi). ⁶ The problem of street children is included as a target of mass mobilization campaigns by the government, along with drug abuse, prostitution, HIV/AIDS, human trafficking, gambling, and vagrancy.⁷

Street children have been described by a government official as one of the “negative phenomena arising from the revival of state-sanctioned capitalism.”⁸ A 1998 directive by the prime minister attributes the problem not only to poverty, but government inattention to factors pushing children onto the street:

The increasing numbers of street children and labor-abused children are posing a burning social problem today. They are the subjects [who are] highly vulnerable to social evils. The above-mentioned situation is partly attributed to such socio-economic reasons as unemployment, illiteracy, increasingly widened gap between the rich and the poor, moral degradation in some families... and also partly to the improper, incomprehensive and ineffective coordination among various branches and levels [of government] as well as the lack of their concentrated efforts in addressing this problem.⁹

Economic liberalization has widened the disparities between rich and poor and between rural and city dwellers. Rural families, and sometimes children on their own, are migrating to urban centers to find work. The removal of state subsidies and the disbanding of agricultural cooperatives in 1988, which had provided health, social security, and education services, has weakened traditional safety nets and led to disruptions in social service delivery in the countryside.¹⁰ Many forms of social assistance have been privatized, and user fees introduced for some of the costs of education, health care, and childcare. Individual households are shouldering more of the costs of services. While some families may be better off than in the past, many are less equipped or receive less support to deal with shocks such as crop failure, natural disasters, or the impact of regional and national financial crises on domestic goods and services.¹¹

While poverty is a significant factor driving children to leave home to work on the streets, others reportedly come from families who have enough money to provide for them. These children leave home because of family or social problems such as death of a parent, domestic violence, alcoholism, divorce, or abandonment.¹²

Numbers of street children in Hanoi

Statistics vary as to the numbers of street children in Hanoi. The Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs (MOLISA) estimates that there are 23,000 street children throughout Vietnam and 1,500 in Hanoi.¹³

While Hanoi’s street children have become less visible since the police round-ups of 2003, organizations and individuals interviewed by Human Rights Watch believe their numbers have not decreased. ¹⁴  According to interviews conducted in 2004 by the Vietnam Development Forum, the numbers of street children have not significantly decreased in recent years, although the children are now “more scattered and less visible.”¹⁵ Their numbers in Hanoi may temporarily drop after police round-up campaigns, as some rotate in and out of detention and others return to their homes in the provinces for a while before returning to the streets of Hanoi.¹⁶

In Hanoi, street children work in parks, markets, bus and train stations, and near temples and tourist attractions. While some support themselves by pick-pocketing and pilfering from shops, many earn a living by selling newspapers, postcards, and lottery tickets, begging, shining shoes, scavenging, and portering in markets. The primary occupation for boys is shoe-shining; for girls it is street vending.¹⁷ According to news reports and Human Rights Watch’s own interviews, most street children in Hanoi earn about 20,000 dong (U.S.$1.25) or less a day.¹⁸

According to a 2003 study by the Youth Research Institute, 75 percent of street children in Hanoi are boys.¹⁹ Most of them originate from Thanh Hoa, an impoverished coastal province south of Hanoi (24 percent). Others come from provinces around Hanoi, including Phu Tho (12 percent), Hung Yen (9 percent), Ha Nam (9 percent), Nam Dinh (8 percent), Bac Giang (7 percent), and Nghe An (7 percent).²⁰

In Hanoi, many street children work in Hoan Kiem district, although they keep their distance from Hoan Kiem lake, a major tourist attraction, because they are more susceptible to being picked up by police there. Some find work from local residents in other parts of the city, including markets north of the Old Quarter, in the back alleys around Long Bien bus station in Ba Dinh district, in squatter settlements in the flood plain near the river in Phuc Xa commune, or across the Long Bien bridge in Gia Lam District. They can also be found in Thanh Xuon district, where the city’s largest bus station is located, near the stadium in My Dinh district and the train station in Dong Da district, and around Lenin Park and Bach Khoa University in Hai Ba Trung district.

“Some days I earn nothing”

A 15-year-old boy who works as a shoe shiner in order to support his family in Hung Yen province described a typical day:

I start work at 8 a.m. and finish at 5:30 in the afternoon. I ride a xe om [motorcycle taxi] to and from work. I work on Hang Gai [street]. I can shine fifty pairs of shoes a day. I have a lot of regular customers. I am afraid of being arrested by the police. Sometimes I hide my toolbox in a bag. That’s quite inconvenient because then sometimes people don’t know that I’m a shoe shiner.

I spend 30,000 dong [U.S.$1.87] on food a day. I eat lunch near Hang Gai and dinner in the Phuc Tan area, where I sleep in a guesthouse. I pay 2,500 dong [U.S.$0.15] a night. There are six people in one room. We sleep on mats. I shower and wash my clothes at the guesthouse.

I go home once every 10 to 15 days. I am quite happy to go home, because I can see my parents. They are even happier to see me. They feel so-so about my work.²¹

Other shoe shiners, such as 18-year-old Hung, make less money:

Some days I earn nothing. Some days just enough for food—20,000 to 30,000 dong [U.S.$1.25 - $1.87]. On average I shine 10 pairs of shoes a day.²²

Like most of the street children interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Hung said he sent a large part of his income home to his family in the countryside:

I send home 200,000 to 300,000 dong [U.S.$12.50 - $18.75] a month. The rest I spend on accommodation, clothes, and food. My family uses the money to pay interest on their debt.²³

 Similarly, 17-year-old Canh, who is from Hung Yen, said:

I can earn 15,000 to 20,000 dong [$0.90 - $1.25] a day. I send home all of the money except what I need for food and a place to stay. My family uses the money to raise animals—ducks, pigs, cows—and to send my sisters to school. My family is very poor. I know they need the money. They’re always in financial trouble.²⁴

Government bodies responsible for child protection

Several ministries and departments are responsible for protection of street children in Vietnam, with the stated aim being to return them to their homes and reunite them with their families.²⁵ At the national level these include the Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs (MOLISA), the Ministry of Public Security (police), and the Committee for Population, Family and Children.²⁶

At the provincial and municipal level, the Department of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs (DOLISA) and local People’s Committees are responsible for care and protection of street children. This includes establishment and administration of Social Protection Centers.

Social Protection Centers thus fall within the locally-controlled administrative system (see below) rather than the juvenile justice system. ²⁷ In theory, People’s Committees and DOLISA are responsible for managing these institutions, although it is clear that the Ministry of Public Security also plays a key role in the centers’ workings.²⁸

The Committee for Population, Family and Children (CPFC)is the ministerial-level state agency with national responsibility for child protection, care, and education of children in need of special protection, including those who have been separated from or unable to live with their parents or guardians.²⁹ It is also responsible for monitoring the operation of all “child support establishments,” which presumably include Social Protection Centers, to ensure that their operation is consistent with their purposes and legal requirements.³⁰ Together with the Ministry of Public Security, the CPFC is responsible for overseeing the protection of children’s rights.³¹

Street children come in contact with government authorities in various ways—through the social welfare system, as “social relief beneficiaries”; through the administrative system if they have not violated any laws, or committed only minor infractions; and through the juvenile justice system.

Human Rights Watch’s research indicates that none of these systems or governmental bodies is fully meeting its obligations to protect and care for street children and to ensure their rights are protected.

Relief, juvenile justice, and administrative policies for children in Vietnam

Vietnam’s social protection system, put in place after de-collectivization in 1988, is responsible for the care of vulnerable people, including homeless children, orphans, children with disabilities, and street children. Social relief policies are developed centrally but implemented at the local level.³²

Vietnam’s social relief policies call for provision of safety nets in poor areas and in localities that suffer from periodic environmental, economic, or agricultural shocks. MOLISA, along with the ministries of finance, health, education, and agriculture/rural development, exercises state management over social relief work. People’s Committees manage “social relief beneficiaries,” who are sent to local Social Protection Centers (as already noted, these are also called Social Charity Establishments or Social Relief Centers), when they face exceptional difficulties or are unable to support or house themselves.³³

The “regular social relief regime” covers the needs of orphans, “lonely elderly,” seriously disabled persons, and chronically-ill mental patients.³⁴ The “irregular social relief regimes” covers people who fall into hardship because of natural calamities or death of a family member, as well as “wandering beggars”—which includes street children. “Wandering beggars” are to receive assistance during the time they are “gathered and waiting [to be] sent back to their residence place.”³⁵ Wandering beggars are to receive 5,000 dong per person per day for no more than 15 days during the time they are held in Social Protection Centers.³⁶  

Treatment of juvenile offenders

Vietnam’s Penal Code establishes the age of criminal responsibility at 14 for criminal offenses and 12 for administrative offenses.³⁷ It provides for certain exemptions for juvenile offenders under the age of 16, and allows early release of juvenile offenders who have shown progress and served half their sentence.³⁸

The Penal Code calls on courts to consider sanctions that are “educative and preventive” when dealing with juvenile cases. Locally-based “education measures” aim to “create conditions for such persons to labor and study in the community and prove their repentance right in the normal social environment under the supervision and with the assistance of the [local] People’s Committees, social organizations, and families.”³⁹

Vietnam’s Law on Child Protection, Care and Education (Law on Child Protection), promulgated in January 2005, calls for law enforcement institutions to work with families, schools, and society to “educate” children who have violated laws:⁴⁰

The handling of children committing acts of law violation is aimed mainly to educate and help those children to realize their wrong-doings, redress such wrong-doings and make progress.⁴¹

In relation to street children who are not found to have violated any laws, the Law on Child Protection calls for People’s Committees at all levels “to create conditions for street children to live in a safe environment, not affected by social evils.”⁴²

The administrative system: No charges, no courts

Street children who have not committed any crime (or only minor offenses) are usually dealt with through Vietnam’s administrative system when they are picked up by the police, rather than the criminal justice system.⁴³ As an administrative matter, the children are not formally charged with a criminal offence, and thus the due process rights that normally precede someone’s detention, such as court proceedings and a hearing, are not required by Vietnamese law in order for children to be sent to the Social Protection Centers.

The administrative system provides that penalties for “offending” behavior can include warnings, fines, community-based “re-education,” and other sanctions, such as placement in a Social Protection Center.

A Vietnamese researcher explained how Social Protection Centers work in reality:

[They] are places for the temporary custody of those who have been picked up by the district authorities during their campaigns. These centers are for people who have not committed any serious crimes, but whose behavior and lifestyle may pose a threat to social order and security. They are, therefore, gathered or arrested without any order from the court or from any judiciary bodies.⁴⁴

A child deprived of his or her liberty, whether via criminal law or administrative procedures, is entitled under international law to the same basic rights. While diverting children away from the criminal justice system is an appropriate goal, dealing with children in conflict with the law by way of administrative measures does not deprive them of or in any way diminish their rights. The practice documented by Human Rights Watch of placing children picked up on the streets in detention in Social Protection Centers without judicial or other independent oversight is fundamentally incompatible with international human rights law.

Requirements for Social Protection Centers

According to the Implementation Decree of the Law on Child Protection, “child support establishments,” which include Social Protection Centers, are required to provide:

Distinct … education for [disabled] children; education and re-education for children in conflict with the law; detoxification for drug-addicted children; management, nurturing and education for children of social sponsor groups [i.e. children who are social relief beneficiaries]; provision of accommodation, meals and other services for … children in special circumstances.⁴⁵

According to Decree 25, which regulates Social Protection Centers, the government is responsible for examining and inspecting the institutions’ adherence to the law, handling violations, and settling “complaints and denunciations about violations of policies and regimes related to operations” of the centers.⁴⁶

Organizations and individuals found to have violated laws regulating Social Protection Centers are to be disciplined, administratively sanctioned, or examined for penal liability, depending on the nature and seriousness of their violations.⁴⁷