Cairo's invisibles: Mel Frykberg reports from Egypt.

AS DAWN BREAKS over the heaving and polluted metropolis of Cairo and the city of 18m people braces itself for another day, some of its most vulnerable--approximately one million street children--can be found sleeping off the effects of glue and other substances of abuse, in the nooks and crannies of myriad alley ways, cul-de-sacs and main roads.

The air fills with a cacophony of screeching car brakes and hooting, as Cairo's millions of vehicles, hundreds of donkey carts, and cyclists laden with piles of steaming bread balancing precariously on huge trays on their heads, wrestle for a much coveted space in the tangle of traffic. This vehicular spaghetti corkscrews and swirls from the outer suburbs before nose-diving towards the multiple lanes of congested traffic in Tahrir and Talaat Herb squares, in the heart of downtown Cairo.

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Businessmen dressed in snappy suits and gleaming, polished shoes, mobile phones stuck to their ears, pass women adorned in vibrant and colourful hijabs, who in turn pick their way past fellaheen from upper Egypt, dressed in traditional galabeyas, while women from the poorest of Cairo's slum suburbs squat on their haunches before heaps of fresh fruit and vegetables, as they try to eke out a few pounds for survival.

But even though Egypt is a poor country with an illiteracy rate of over 30% and an average annual income of just $2,600 there is a hierarchy and pecking order among the classes. And the grubby street children with their filthy, torn clothing and weeks of accumulated grime encrusting their skinny bodies and rats' tails hair, are considered the lowest of the low. The detritus of society.

"More than 25% of all children arrested in Egypt are children considered 'vulnerable to delinquency' under Egypt's Child Laws. They have committed no crime and are typically homeless, beggars or truants from school," explains Clarisa Bencomo, a researcher in Human Rights Watch's Children's Rights Division, that carried out an 87-page report on the subject some years ago.

So desperate is the economic plight of many parents, that they force their children on to the streets to beg under the harsh sunlight and pall of pollution in summer, or the howling winds and thrashing rain of winter.

Groups of these dispossessed and unwanted block the paths of unwitting tourists, pleading pitifully for baksheesh (tips), rubbing their stomachs and making hand motions towards their mouths. Not easily rebuffed, if they are ignored they will grab on to hands and even spit in faces, further exacerbating their unpopularity.

Late in the morning, 12-year-old Mohammed can be found curled into a tight ball on the sidewalk just outside the international pizza and burger restaurant chains in downtown Tahrir Square, the heart of Cairo's business and tourist district, sleeping off the effects of a night's glue sniffing.

He is one of 11 children there from the poor and decaying slum suburb of Shubra. His father is an itinerant labourer earning an irregular pittance and his mother is a housewife. The family's desperate economic plight means Mohammed and his brothers and sisters often go to bed hungry and have only a handful of threadbare and torn clothing worn day in and day out. Schooling, or the hope of an education perhaps leading towards a better future, are out of the question.

Mohammed's parents force him into the streets to beg and if he refuses or returns home with insufficient funds he is beaten viciously, to the point where he prefers to sleep on the streets.

Not all the children beg; many try to earn a few pounds by running errands or parking and cleaning cars and windscreens. According to research carried out by Unicef and its local counterparts in Egypt, the most important factor behind children dropping out of school and ending up on the streets is the deteriorating standard of education. Several decades of rapid population growth have placed formidable demands on Egypt and simply keeping up with the increases in the number of students has absorbed most of the resources leading to a drop in the quality of schooling.

An alarming report released a little while ago by Human Rights Watch claimed that after street arrests, police in Cairo routinely beat street children with batons, whips, rubber hoses and belts, and transport them into custody in dangerous vehicles, often with adult detainees. Children held in overcrowded and dirty adult police lockups must bribe guards or beg from criminal detainees to obtain food and bedding. Those transferred to the overcrowded al Azbekiya juvenile police lockup receive only marginally better treatment.

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The health problems suffered by these youngsters are severe and range from cholera to tuberculosis and anaemia. Studies show they are exposed to a variety of toxic substances, both in their food and in the environment around them. They are also at risk of various kinds of abuse. In one survey, 86% of children questioned identified violence as a major problem in their life, while 50% claimed to have been exposed to sexual abuse.

Abla EL-Badri from the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) said, "If boys find life on the streets hard, then girls, who might face more frequent sexual attacks and rape, live in near-constant fear."

So dire is the situation in Egypt that in 2004 the Egyptian government launched its National Strategy to Protect and Rehabilitate Street Children in an effort to reintegrate them into Egyptian society. Government institutions, NGOs, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and NCCM coordinate joint efforts throughout the country and have established reception centres in an endeavour to protect and rehabilitate street children. Some children have been saved from falling through the cracks by the Hope Village Society, a group dedicated to the care and welfare of girls in Cairo, Alexandria and Qena who fall pregnant while on the streets, often as a result of rape.

The Society aims to provide young mothers and their babies with the secure surroundings they need to put their fractured lives back together. Medical care is provided by a resident nurse and various visiting doctors while legal advice and help is also on offer if needed.

By the age of 21 the young women are expected to leave the centre by which time, having attended literacy and child-rearing classes, and some vocational sessions, their chances of being reintegrated into society are stronger.

But this is only tackling the tip of the iceberg and the problem of what to do with Egypt's street children remains one of immense proportions. It is a problem which many Egyptians wish would just disappear.

Meanwhile, as the golden orb of the sun sets over the minarets of the city's ubiquitous mosques and millions of weary office workers make their way home, averting their eyes from the pitiful bundles of humanity that litter the pavements, little Mohammed's pain is temporarily dulled ... as the effects of the glue start to kick in.

MEL FRYKBERG reports from Egypt