Child welfare activists here say there may be as many as 50,000 street kids in Cairo.
“They leave home because of violence or neglect or because they don’t have enough to eat,” said Jane Gibreel, country director of Save the Children.
Many are unregistered and without identification, they cannot go to school, work or get access to health care and police can arrest them at any time.
Poverty soared in the last years of the Hosni Mubarak regime, as inflation levels rose as high as 30 percent. Fewer families could afford the $10 a year for their children to attend school or pay for notebooks and uniforms.
In the vast slums where hundreds of thousands of the poorest live on the outskirts of Cairo, children help their families by selling trinkets to drivers or by begging and stealing.
“I’ve never been to school,” said Muhammad, 9, as he pulled up his dirty yellow shirt to blow his nose, revealing jeans with no zipper. “I’m on the streets, sometimes I sleep on the streets, because I have to get money.”
He begs, washes cars, and if he is like most street children here, makes a living as a petty thief, according to aid organizations.
At least one homeless boy — Ismail Yassin, 16 — was killed in the recent riots, and many were injured, according to local hospitals. Street children said they were paid by the Cairo police to throw stones and Molotov cocktails at protesters.