Street Children

Images of child soldiers in war zones have shocked the world, yet the forcible recruitment of under-age combatants is just one example of the many ways in which children suffer appalling hardships as a result of conflict in their countries. We are witnessing unspeakable abominations being committed against children in the context of armed conflict and its aftermath in 50 countries around the globe.

The photo exhibition at the city's newest luxury office building, critics agreed, presented a poignant portrait of the lives of Ho Chi Minh City's street children. The show was an artistic and commercial success, attracting large crowds of Vietnamese and expatriates, receiving extensive coverage in the local media and resulting in the sale of 96 photos. "There was some real talent on display," said Nguyen Thi Lan Huong, who owns a popular art gallery. "The pictures were very moving.

A former police officer convicted of murder in a shooting rampage in which eight street children died was declared innocent Thursday at his retrial. Nelson Oliveira dos Santos Cunha, 29, was sentenced in November to 261 years in jail on eight charges of murder and one of attempted murder in the 1993 incident. Under Brazilian law, anyone sentenced to more than 20 years in jail for a crime has the automatic right to a retrial. "This decision shames our society," said Rio Dist. Atty.

On steamy weekend afternoons when most Philippine children are at play, Bernardo Peresas goes to school amid the gray concrete crypts of Kalookan cemetery. One grade accommodates all who show up. Bernardo, an undersized 10-year-old dressed in dingy Boston Celtics shorts that dwarf his spindly legs, is the youngest. Most are in their teens. The cemetery school is among the most unusual in the world.

The contrast couldn't have been greater. Mikel Flamm's childhood in Newport Beach was idyllic and protected; the lives of the homeless children he photographed on the streets of Vietnam are anything but: boys and girls sleeping in storefront alcoves, scavenging for food, begging for money and often becoming the sexual prey of tourists. An estimated 50,000 children live on the streets of Vietnam. The Vietnamese call them bui doi--"dust of life."

A Rio de Janeiro state court declared not guilty two police officers and another man accused of shooting to death eight street children and wounding six in a 1993 massacre, a court spokesman said. Six children died when assailants opened fire indiscriminately on about 70 youths playing or sleeping on the steps of a church July 23, 1993. Two other children were taken to the waterfront and executed.

The billowing green and yellow tent hardly looks like a place of books and letters. It is, after all, a circus tent, a child's paradise, the place where youngsters like Marcelo Silva Cardoso, 14, work on their trapeze and high-wire acts; where tiny Iramaia Riberio, 6, dons makeup to practice her clown and contortionist routines, and where Eleida Gois, 12, studies juggling and acrobatics. But it is definitely school, and much more, say the children.

He salutes as cars approach, bows from the waist, then clasps his hands together pleadingly. Most of the drivers pass on, but some slow down and drop a few bills onto the potholed road for 9-year-old Han to scoop up. Han is one of half a dozen children who work a stretch of highway 35 miles south of Phnom Penh. The children say that they only come out when they aren't needed in the rice paddies, and that they make the equivalent of 40 to 60 cents each on an average day.

Calling it a model for programs worldwide, the Inter-American Development Bank and Brazilian officials launched a $20-million project Wednesday to aid this nation's growing and embarrassing number of neglected, homeless children. The nationwide program is a departure for the bank, which until a few years ago supported only transportation and energy projects. In recent years, the bank has branched into environmental programs, such as sewer construction and the cleanup of Rio's Guanabara Bay.