Woman giving birth in Takeo’s Provincial Hospital. 97 out of every 1000 babies will die before their first birthday. (Takeo, 100 kilometers south Phnom Penh).
Sopath sleeps wrapped in a mosquito net on the corner between 154th and Kramon Street. Sopath is from the south of the country- Sihanoukville- but spends long periods of time in the capital. (Phnom Penh).
Rotana sleeps in the stairs of a building at Sok Hok Street. Some tenants of the apartments allow them to be in the stairs and others not. Logically, the children already know where are more permissive and come to sleep there, specially in the rainy season. (Phnom Penh).
A boy sleeps inside a basket covered with a mosquito net at Phsar Chas Market, at 108th Street. (Phnom Penh).
A boy sleeps on a catwalk over Tonlé Sap River at dusk. (Phnom Penh).
Nhean, Pich, Mei y Thy (from left to right) sleep at 154th Street. (Phnom Penh).
Kor, a teenage deaf-mute, wakes up hugging one of his friends, Phorn, in an attempt to protect himself from the morning chill at 109th Street. (Phnom Penh).
A group of cardboard and plastic pickers sleep in the surrounding area of the dump of the city, also known as Garbage Mountain. (Pu Masae Village, Stung Meanchey District, Phnom Penh).
Dozens of families live in the gardens between Royal palace and Tonlé Sap's riverfront, at Mok Vaeng's park. Every morning its inhabitants cross the Sisovath Boulevard to tidy up themselves in the waters of the river. (Phnom Penh).
Rats litter.
View of the centre of the city around Charles de Gaulle Boulevard. (Phnom Penh).
Sann brushes his hair on 136th Street, where he usually sleeps. (Phnom Penh).
Leap, back, eats a peace of bread just picked up from the garbage while Rith, on the front, looks to the camera on 184th street. (Phnom Penh).
Yin, after refilling a plastic glass with the rests of the juices of the other children (back in the class), drinks its content with a straw. Later, he will put the plastic glass into his sack to sell it for a few riels. (Chaktomuk Primary School, Phnom Penh).
“Diamond” Pich eats an apple attached to a piece of string picked up off the ground on Kramou Street. Often, playing can become the best cure to escape from reality. (Phnom Penh).
White dog.
“Diamond” Pich lights a cigarrette with Nhean's at Kramou Street. It will be their only breakfast today. Each cigarrette costs 100 riel, around 2,5 cents of dollar. (Phnom Penh).
Lort, stoned with glue, in front of Central Market (Phsar Themey). (Phnom Penh).
Chomnap and Tola waiting at Monivong Boulevard for the rest of the members of their group to go, like every morning, to the Central Market (Phsar Thmey), a place where it is easy to find something to eat. (Phnom Penh).
A boy wearing a pair of woman’s shoes walks along 105th Street. (Phnom Penh).
Two girls come back home at 105th Street after spending all day long picking-up cardboard and plastic in the centre of the city. (Phnom Penh).
A youth pulls his cart filled with cardboard. For every kilo of cardboard he gets 150 riels, about 4 cents of dollar. (Phnom Penh).
During the weekends the riverfront of Tonlé Sap gets full of children and young people to weight strollers for a few riel (usually 100 hundred, 2’5 cents of dollar). Weight people, small selling or even begging are the only way to get some money that many families and, especially, disable people (as the young in the picture) have in a country that social services are nonexistent. (Phnom Penh).
A travelling vendor on 182nd Street. All the plastic made manufactured products are imported from China; the low prices of those items make them accessible to most of the Cambodians, improving considerably their everyday lifes. (Phnom Penh).
A boy shines the shoes of two military at 63th Street. As opposed to the cloth bags used by street children, the wooden box this boy uses shows us that he does not live on the street. (Phnom Penh).
The plastic bag is the most usual way to earn a living amongst the children of the capital. At 900 riels the kilo (about 25 cents of dollar) plastic is an important source of income for the street children and many families. The collection system has a chain effect: those who collect with bags sell their merchandise to those who have carts, who in turn sell it to the recycling centers. Finally the rubbish leaves the country in large lorries bound for Vietnamese recycling plants. (Phnom Penh).
Two children collect cardboard on 182nd Street. Accompanied by older children, the carts, which are almost always hired, show us that they have a family and a place to return to at the end of the day. (Phnom Penh).
A boy dodges two dogs that guard the entrance of a metal warehouse at 163th Street. (Phnom Penh).
A child playing in the dump. (Pu Masae Village, Stung Meanchey District, Phnom Penh).
“Diamond” Pich playing videogames in a shop in the alleyway between 63th and 67th Streets. The favorite games of the children are the kung fu fighting ones. It is not difficult to make a few hundred riels by looking after double-parked cars or begging from the tourists.
Kor hugging a cat at 154th Street. (Phnom Penh).
A dog inside a car at 51st Street. (Phnom Penh).
The stairway of a building situated between the Boulevards of Moniving and Kampuchea. Whole families live together in tiny 10m2 rooms with communal bathrooms in the hallways. During the Red Khmer regime (1975 – 1978) the city was completely emptied. In the following years, as the population slowly returned to the capital, the apartments became occupied by the new arrivals as the majority of the old owners had been assassinated. (Phnom Penh).
A group of children watch the street from small holes of an apartment building at Monivong Boulevard. (Phnom Penh).
Panha, with an NGO’s T-shirt on, takes a rest inside an apartment building at Sok Hok Street. The street children go in and out again and again from the many refuges that are spread along the city, depending on their necessities and their own families’. Many times are those who demand their sons and daughters to the centers so they can work and bring some money home, forcing the living from the centers. Panha has been living in Our Home refuge, in Phnom Penh, as well as in Sakarach III, a special centre for drug abusers in Konpung Speu province, both supported by Spanish NGO Global Humanitaria. (Phnom Penh).
Thia walks along the railways in 4th Slung, on the west of the former railway station. (Phnom Penh).
In Phnom Penh converge Mekong and Tonlé Sap Rivers, becoming Tonlé Bassac to the south. The access to the waters is quite easy because of the many stairs that connect those with the riverfront that goes along the city on its axis north-south. On those waters the inhabitants of Phnom Penh wash themselves, fish, swim and play, becoming the river and its surroundings in the nerve centre of spare time of the citizens. (Phnom Penh).
A boy walks through the dam under the look of a monk. (Phnom Penh).
A boy walks beside the Tonlé Sap River (Phnom Penh).
A teenager jumps into the water of Tonlé Sap River (Phnom Penh).
Fish.
A boy descends from the stairs of a building at 130th Street. The building, a deserted cinema, is empty inside. This space situated where the movie theater was is delimit with thin plywood sheets, forming small rooms where dozens of families, hundreds of people, live, forming a labyrinth. The huge room doesn’t have any window, so the darkness is almost total and the few points of light that illuminate the place have been done by hammers, breaking up the walls (Phnom Penh).
Va, inside an abandoned train wagon, prepares the material for smoking a dosis of yama (methamphetamine) that he just bought with Panha and Thia, his friends, who wait impatiently. One dose of yama costs 5000 riels, about 1,5 dollar (District 4, Phnom Penh).
Makara, Va and Thy smoke Yama (Methamphetamine) on an abandoned train wagon in District 4, to the west of the train station. Methamphetamine is the most widely consumed drug amongst the children and teenagers in the capital, even surpassing the number of glue sniffers. One dose costs 5000 riels, around 1,5 dollar. (Phnom Penh).
Kor with a toy pistol at Neayok Srey Street. (Phnom Penh).
Yin, stoned with glue, smokes a cigarette on Kramou Street. Unlike the majority of street children who stick to one group, Yin is a “satellite” boy who constantly changes from one group to another and can be seem in every corner of the city. (Phnom Penh).
“Diamond” Pich sniffs glue on the corner between 154th and Kramou Streets. He does not remember how long he has been living on the street and, like almost everyone in the same situation, he is addicted to glue, among other drugs. A tube of glue costs 300 riels (around 9 cents of dollar). (Phnom Penh).
Kor plays covering the mouth of Lort, totally stoned with glue, at 136th Street. (Phnom Penh).
Pich, Sopath, Kor, Nhean and Mei (from left to right) spend the afternoon in one of their favorite places, outside de stamp-shop at 136th Street. (Phnom Penh).
Yin, stoned with glue, at Kramou Street. (Phnom Penh).
Water Festival. View of the Royal Palace with a portrait of the present King Norodom Sihamuni. The king is the public face of power, however the Prime Minister Hun Sen is the real political leader. (Phnom Penh).
 |
 |
NEW FNAC TALENT PRIZE ’06 (Spain)
Article 18 of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia: “the state will protect the rights of children, particularly the right to life, education, and protection during times of war, in addition to protection against economic and sexual exploitation”.