Street Children in Mongolia
Come join us as Group 178 in conjunction with Living Ubuntu host Kent Treptow, a photographer whose recent series in the Daily Pilot showcased the plight of street children in Mongolia.
Mr. Treptow will be showing his photographs and speaking about what he saw during his visit to Ulaanbaatar.
In 1990, Mongolia abandoned its one-party style of government and embraced democracy and private industry. Unfortunately, the withdrawal of Soviet support and a collapse of the economy has led to widespread poverty and unemployment.
The situation of street children is worsened by the weather. Mongolia, a land-locked country, suffers from extremely cold Siberian winters lasting from October to April with persistent winds. (In Ulaanbaatar, the summer average temperature for the month of July is about 14 °C or 58 °F! In the winter the temperature can drop to -47.2 °F—temperature chart with values in °C).
In Kent’s words:
The children live in manholes littered with rat feces and cockroaches. They rummage through trash for scraps of food. Many are malnourished or sick from eating bad meat. Others, as young as 7, drink. The girls live in fear of sexual assaults. Hope is an abstract in this underground society. But they also sing, laugh, look out for each other and fight with remarkable resilience and resourcefulness to live to see another day.
See His Article Online
You can read his article at the Daily Pilot’s website, and view his narrated slideshows.
Our speaker: Kent Treptow
Kent Treptow is a news photographer who has worked for newspapers in Colorado, Michigan and Washington. A Southern California native, he currently shoots for the Daily Pilot newspaper in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa. His work has received regional and national honors. A love of travel has taken him to five continents. He currently lives in Newport Beach, California.
In 2006 he traveled to Mongolia, where he noticed hundreds of homeless children wandering the streets of the capital, Ulaanbaatar. Further research revealed that most of these children live in manholes beneath the streets, the only places they can survive long, freezing winters in what is considered the coldest capital city in the world. He returned the following year, spending a month documenting the struggles of these kids, some of whom are as young as 7 years old, others who have lived 10 years or more underground.
Amnesty International’s Interest in These Issues
Amnesty International, originally formed as an organization to promote the rights of individuals, has tackled an increasing number of human rights issues throughout its 40-year existence and now campaigns for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR) with its current Dignity Campaign. Amnesty International bases its work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states
Article 25.
- Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
- Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.