The Lion's Pride Volume 11 (Winter 2019) | Page 29

street because families are in dire need of food and experience pain from
their situation. These children must work long hours and endure hunger
and thirst and fatigue, and, in many cases, they will be raped in addition
to these hardships. As reported by Iran HRM (2017), an organization
that monitors Iran’s human rights, “Research shows 45% of labor
children and those living on the streets are suffering from illnesses such
as AIDS, hepatitis and others. These children are also known to be
suffering from malnutrition, being short in height, low weight, skin
illnesses and psychological disorders. Many such children work at least
6 hours a day and don’t eat even a single decent meal, providing the
grounds for these children to obtain even more illnesses.”
Typically, government is responsible for such problems in countries.
In most countries, the government accepts these problems and seeks to
solve these problems, but in Iran, the government doesn’t even accept
that there are so many problems in the country. Iran’s government,
instead of solving problems, tries to depict these problems as small and
unimportant. As The Baghdad Post (2018) explains, “The Iranian regime
has said that there are more than 60,000 children living on the streets in
Iran. However, this number must be taken with a pinch of salt because
the regime is known for trying to downplay the issues in the country.
Some have said that there are probably more than 200,000 homeless
children on the street. Most of these are centred around large cities
including Tehran. Homeless children are particularly susceptible to