| BERBERA, Somaliland, June 18 (AFP) -
Excited children jostle in their ramshackle school to answer a
teacher's question. These kids were until very recently living
rough on Somaliland's sweltering streets, but now are dreaming
of a bright future thanks to a UNICEF project.
"My teacher has told me to learn and hope for the
best, because if I learn, I will not be a beggar and might
even own a house, car and a shop," said 11-year-old Ahmed
Aden, who had spent five years on the streets.
His classmate Amina Ahmed was less self-interested, saying:
"I wish to become rich in order to help other unfortunate
children in Somaliland."
The school in the port of Berbera, 155 kms (96 miles)
northeast of the capital Hargeisa, was financed by the United
Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), which has launched a major
campaign to take abandoned children off the streets here and
in other towns.
Today it houses 58 street girls and 73 boys abandoned by
their poor families.
"B, T, J," they chant, the Somali Latin alphabet
in Arabic.
Local religious leader Sheikh Hassan Sheikh Ali said the
number of street children has swelled in Somaliland, which
declared independence from the rest of Somalia in May 1991 and
has yet to be recognised by the outside world.
This is because traditional extended family arrangements
have collapsed, he added.
"Under the Somali clan set-up, orphaned or poor
children were always catered for by relatives, and that is why
there had been few street children in Somaliland," Ali
said.
"But now, most families are poor and cannot even take
care of their own children, let alone a relative," Ali
told AFP at a Berbera beach mosque.
A Berbera municipal official estimated at 10,000 the number
of street children in the whole of Somaliland, whose
population numbers 2.5 million people. He said about another
20,000 children were working under-age, most of them selling
merchandise such as cigarettes.
UNICEF officials said they will only target about 6,000 of
these children.
The UN agency's Berbera education project was made possible
when the city's council agreed to assist a local charity to
build decent shelters and provide other materials to support
the street children.
The project is also helping change traditional views on the
education of girls.
Asha Ismail Liban, owner of a small restaurant in Berbera,
pointed out that job opportunities here were reserved for men
because "they were given the opportunity to go to school,
while the girls were left at home to serve the family."
In Sheek village, 60 kilometres (37 miles) south of
Berbera, 16-year-old Asha Ahmed was out herding her family's
livestock, helped by two of her sisters, both of them under 10
years of age.
"I would like to go to town to learn, but I cannot
abandon my beloved family as I am their daughter," she
said.
"My future is bleak without education, unless Allah
gives me a good Somali husband," 16-year-old Asha said.
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