Issues affecting children in Egypt include sub-standard education, where three million children 15-24yrs are illiterate leading to high levels of youth unemployment; poor sanitation facilities in urban areas leading to health issues; regular corporal punishment and many children (8%) engaged in child labour. A recent UN report also concluded that five million Egyptian children were deprived of appropriate housing and 1.6 million children under the age of five experience health and food deprivation with 30% of children under 5yrs old stunted and two out of five children in Upper Egypt living in poverty.

Egypt is a fairly young nation as around 33% of its population is less than 14 years old and 1.7 million of them live as orphans often taking what work is available simply because they have to to survive. For example reports note that children harvesting cotton may have to work for 11 hours a day in 40 degrees heat. Many of these children end up living on the streets of Cairo (see article below) where there are an indeterminate number living there; some put the figure in the tens of thousands, others put it at over a million. Police records shed some insight into those numbers with 42,505 children being arrested on the streets in one year alone with 10,958 of them being charged with being 'vulnerable to delinquency', that is they have committed a crime just by having no responsible adult to care for them. The average age of those arrested was thirteen years old. You can help when you sponsor a child in Egypt.