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Intelligence Report on Street Children Alarms UN Officials

By H.P. Albarelli Jr.


“The problem of street children, global in scope and in some areas rapidly expanding at disturbing rates, poses a heretofore little realized and under appreciated nexus to the increase in numbers of terrorists as well as terrorists sponsored incidents, both small and large.” So begins a draft report written by a select group of American intelligence officials, including several CIA representatives and at least one representative form the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection. The report has reportedly alarmed a number of United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) officials who work to assist street children worldwide. Officials’ concerns centered on suspicions that groups of street children in certain regions were being targeted for surveillance and infiltration.

The draft report, dated April 2005 and marked “Group Working Paper” on its cover, was produced by a special assignment team charged with studying the relationship between street children—defined in the report as “boys and girls under the age of eighteen, often as young as five or six who because of economic and familial reasons spend all or substantial amounts of their time on the streets”— and the expansion of global terrorism. Worldwide it is estimated that there are between 100 million and 150 million street children. The actual number is imprecise because of the difficulties of maintaining an accurate census and because social scientists tend to quibble over “what constitutes a street child. “

Requests from this reporter to UN public relations officials Erica Kochi and Alfred Ironside to comment on the report were declined. An assistant to Ms. Kochi said, “UN activities in the field aimed at assisting children are based on need, not politics. UNICEF, the UN’s primary group for service delivery to children, does not take sides in political conflicts. UNICEF works to draw the world’s attention to the devastating affects of violence and conflict on children. UNICEF condemns any statement in any form that encourages children to hate, discriminate, or to take to violent actions.”

The draft report, which numbers nearly 130 pages, contains detailed information about the increasing numbers of homeless children worldwide, especially in countries with sizable Islamic populations. States one section concerning Pakistan, “Here the threat of children being recruited into terrorist ranks looms large.” Another section covering Nigeria states: “The melding of Islamic fundamentalism and indigenous beliefs found in former capital city, Lagos, with over 14 million inhabitants, presents problems unique in scope, especially in regards to formulating counter-measures.” The report also contains quotes from Child Soldiers Newsletter. The newsletter is published by the independent Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, which had nothing to do with producing the draft report. Reads one quoted section: “Uganda presents a stark example: there thousands of children are in constant fear of abduction and forced recruitment by the Lord’s Resistance Army [a violent Sudan-based group].”

The example the Lord’s Resistance Army is employed to segue into a section addressing what the report cites as a “closely related problem”: the worldwide rise of child soldiers.

A recently published book entitled Children at War by P.W. Singer, a National Security Fellow at the Brookings Institution and an occasional advisor to the U.S. military, dramatically underscores the growing phenomena of conscripted children. Singer reveals that the first U.S. serviceman to die in Afghanistan was killed by a 14-year old boy. Child terrorism, Singer writes, can be dealt with by undercutting “the institutions that assist terrorist groups in mobilization and recruitment. Measures include enlisting religious leaders to speak out against the use of children,” bettering school systems, and holding adults and families “responsible for their children’s actions.”

The draft report does not mention Singer’s book, but does raise strong concerns about the recruitment of street children to the swelling ranks of child soldiers, which as report emphasizes, significantly compounds the overall issue of children as potential terrorist. Street children, more often than not, do not recognize or respond to conventional leaders and operate by their own codes of conduct. States the report, “The challenge is formidable one that must be reckoned with before the hour grows much later.”



H.P. Albarelli Jr. is a Florida-based investigative journalist and writer. His just-published book, THE HEAP, focuses on a group of street children and a remarkable discovery that they make.