Children at Risk, Philippines

• Prize
  Gold in Editorial/General News
• Photographer
  Kyo Shimizu

Street children are always at risk of crimes. They can’t survive without belonging to a gang group. Kids are protected by senior gang stars but they are force to crimes such as selling drugs, snatching, steeling things and sometimes murder someone. Juvenile justice system is still under development in the Philippines. Facilities are not enough that kids are suffered in severe conditions. One girl who was just hanging around outside during midnight caught by police and was pushed in the same cell where youths who committed murder stay. She had stayed there for 7 days and waiting for parents to pick her up. But parents never know where their children go if they became street children. Japanese NGO, KnK Japan provides legal advices and release children who unjustly staying in a detention center.