Our Broken Dreams–
Child Migration in Southern Africa
Save the Children with Weaver Press
Children who choose to leave home as a result of hunger, poverty, conflict, or simply to seek adventure, often travel alone. Crossing the border into strange countries, which for them hold great promise, the find their hopes battered when bandits steal their possessions or abuse them. They are often arrested by authorities, have their few possessions confiscated, and find themselves vulnerable to sexual and verbal abuse. In Our Broken Dreams, children tell their own stories to highlight the dangers they face and what has driven them to make what is often a long and dangerous journey. Their singular voices, remind us of their courage, resilience and their refusal to manipulate the situation in which they find themselves through self-pity and sentiment.
‘I came here to work to build a house for my grandmother and buy some cattle, so that they can sell them and get something to eat when I die, because my parents fail to do that for us.’
Children involved in providing their stories for this book called for several things. These include:
• Being better protected by governments in other countries
• Teaching other children and communities about the dangerous realities of living alone in another country
• Stopping the abuse, imprisonment and repatriation of foreign unaccompanied children by the authorities
• ‘Unaccompanied child migrants are extremely vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
Though numbers are difficult to estimate, because of the ‘illegality’ of much of the cross-border movement of children, we are not talking about hundreds but thousands of vulnerable children. This is an issue that has slipped through the cracks of public concern in southern Africa and around the world.’ Chris McIvor, Save the Children programme director in Mozambique.
Full colour with illustrations
2008: 210 x 222 mm. pp 114
ISBN 978 1 77922 070 7
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