ETHIOPIA: Focus on the plight of street children

Frehiwot Eshetu appears like any ordinary daughter. As a 13-year-old she helps her mother clean around their small, mud-walled home and looks after her youngest brother Tariq. Yet a year ago she was living on the streets with prostitutes, her friends were using drugs, sniffing benzene and begging. Surviving on scraps from garbage she soon became sick, her stomach infested with worms and her skin and hair riddled with lice. But Frehiwot is lucky. She is described as a success story – plucked from the streets of Addis Ababa and re-united with her family.