Did International Day for Street Children start in 2011 or 2012?

2011. The Consortium for Street Children's own campaign site recorded the first day on 12 April 2011, and Aviva and the UN Special Representative on Violence Against Children both published pages that day calling it the first; the 2012 date in circulation comes from the charity's later wording that the day has been celebrated globally since 2012.

Why is International Day for Street Children on 12 April?

The date has been fixed since the first observance in 2011 and the campaign has kept it every year since. No source published by the Consortium for Street Children gives a reason for choosing it, and a claim in circulation that it marks a 1955 United Nations event is unsourced.

International Day for Street Children

Next celebratedMonday, April 12, 2027

Nobody can say how many children this day is for: a UN study found the estimates, the repeated 100 million included, have no basis in fact. Every 12 April its organisers press governments to treat them as children with rights.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated September 6, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEApril 12

OBSERVED INInternationally

CATEGORYAwareness

SUBCATEGORYYouth

ORIGIN

Institutional Initiative

FOUNDING ENTITY

Consortium for Street Children

FIRST OBSERVED

2011

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A campaign launched it, not a proclamation.

The Consortium for Street Children launched the International Day for Street Children on 12 April 2011 with a reception at the National Theatre in London, as part of a campaign it called Louder Together. Photographs of street children by four invited artists were projected onto the theatre's flytower that evening.

Read the 2011 campaign pagevia Consortium for Street Children

INTRO

Ask how many street children there are and nobody can say

Nobody knows how many children the International Day for Street Children is for. A United Nations study published in January 2012 found that global estimates of their number have no basis in fact. The frequently cited total of more than 100 million, it said, had been questioned.

That study had been ordered nineteen days before the first observance was held. So the day arrived alongside a finding that the world was no closer to knowing how large the problem was.

The Consortium for Street Children still sets a theme for the day each year. Its 2026 campaign runs under the title Protect, not Punish, and asks governments to widen street children's access to justice.

ORIGINS

International Day for Street Children history

INTRODUCTION

The network behind this day began with two people and a gap. In early 1992 Nicholas Fenton, then director of Childhope, and Trudy Davies, research and liaison officer to the all-party parliamentary group on population and development, saw that the newly emerging street children charities needed an umbrella body.

On 27 May 1992 they put the proposal to Baroness Ewart-Biggs and to Lady Chalker, then the overseas development minister. The founding group met two days later and formed a committee.

For the next eighteen months the organisation ran from Davies's desk in the House of Commons. It was launched at 10 Downing Street on 18 November 1993. Incorporation followed on 31 March 1995, as a company limited by guarantee.

CHAPTER 01

Geneva moved first

The day did not arrive out of nowhere. Weeks before the first observance, on 24 March 2011, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on children working and living on the street.

It passed at the Council's 46th meeting, without a vote. Its subject, in the Council's own words, was a holistic approach to the protection and promotion of the rights of children working and/or living on the street.

CHAPTER 02

A night at the National Theatre

The launch itself was a London evening. Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle spoke about his experience of children on the streets while filming Slumdog Millionaire in India.

Aviva, the campaign's corporate backer, marked the day across the 28 countries where it operated and published its own account the same day. The Consortium recorded celebrations in more than 30 locations that first year.

CHAPTER 03

From a campaign to a rulebook

In June 2014 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child decided to write a general comment on children in street situations. Three years later it produced General Comment No. 21, dated 21 June 2017.

The Consortium says it wants that guidance implemented in full. Since 2018 the campaign has run on its four steps to equality, the framework it uses to press that case.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Consortium launches at 10 Downing Street

The umbrella network for the emerging street children charities was formally launched in London on 18 November 1993.

Network registered at Companies House

It was registered at Companies House on 31 March 1995 under the name Consortium for Street Children (UK).

Geneva adopts a street children resolution

The UN Human Rights Council passed resolution 16/12 on children working and living on the street.

First observance held in London

The inaugural day was marked on 12 April, with celebrations recorded in more than 30 locations.

United Nations issues its own guidance

The Committee on the Rights of the Child issued General Comment No. 21 on children in street situations.

Campaign adopts four steps to equality

The Consortium reorganised the day's advocacy around a framework for applying that guidance in full.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why International Day for Street Children Matters

LAW

The UN says states should abolish offences like begging and loitering.

General Comment No. 21 says states should, with immediate effect, abolish where appropriate the offences that criminalise children for begging, loitering and running away from home. It says they should also abolish any provision that allows children and their families to be rounded up or removed from public space.

GEOGRAPHY

Street children are not only a poor-world problem

The campaign's own myth-busting page states that street children are present in all countries, developed and developing alike. In the UK they are more commonly known as runaways or detached youth.

PARTICIPATION

The children were asked what the research should cover

The three areas the Consortium's legal research covers, status offences, police round-ups and legal identity, were chosen because street children said those topics were especially important to them. In 2024 ten member organisations ran focus groups with street-connected children, and the Consortium says those discussions shaped the campaign.

BY THE NUMBERS

International Day for Street Children by the Numbers

£682,835: Consortium for Street Children income, 2024
5.7: Consortium's staff, full-time equivalent, 2024
200+: Organisations in the Consortium's network
111: Countries the network's members work in
327: Children consulted for General Comment 21

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about International Day for Street Children

The charity's donor club is named after the date

The Consortium for Street Children runs a 12:04 Club for smaller regular donors, named, its trustees wrote, after International Day for Street Children.

The UN dropped the phrase the day still uses

General Comment No. 21 adopted children in street situations as its term, and listed street children among the older labels it replaced.

In Accra, three in four counted were girls

A 2005 study cited by the UN found that the large majority of children counted in Bamako were boys, while in Accra three out of four were girls.

A police training partnership reached 36,000 officers

In 2008 and 2009 the Consortium worked with Ethiopia's Police University College and UNICEF to train police trainers, who have since trained 36,000 officers throughout the country.

The campaign's original website is gone

The domain streetchildrenday.org no longer serves the campaign, and its account of the first observance is now read through Internet Archive captures.

It is as if they are invisible to the conscience of the world.

Sir John MajorPatron, Consortium for Street Children

GOOD TO KNOW

International Day for Street Children Around the World

Uganda

Dwelling Places planned outreaches, a short documentary and child participatory advocacy for 2025

Bangladesh

Friends of Street Children planned a screening of its short film Where the Kids have No Name at 1030 BST on 12 April

Kenya

Glad's House planned a street walk and a ball game, after consulting children on what its messaging should focus on

Sierra Leone

the government asked the Consortium in 2024 to review its approach to street-connected children

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe International Day for Street Children

Read the children's own words in the UN guidance

General Comment No. 21 opens with statements from children in street situations, and takes its first section title, change our story, from one of them. Read that opening before you read anything written about these children.

Follow the organisers' campaign for the year

The Consortium for Street Children sets a theme for each 12 April and publishes a toolkit to go with it. Its 2026 campaign page carries both.

LOOK

Look up how your own country's law treats them

The Consortium publishes an atlas of national law on street children, produced with the law firm Baker McKenzie. Its guide explains what the research covers.

CHECK

Check the charity's register entry before you give

The Consortium for Street Children is registered in England and Wales, and its entry on the public register lists its income, its trustees and its accounts. Donations and legacies were its largest single source of income in 2024.

CORRECT

Correct the picture the phrase creates

The campaign's own myth-busting page says street children have many connections to the street, some living on it and some working on it. Some keep contact with their families while others break it entirely.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know International Day for Street?

1 / 8

In which year was the first International Day for Street Children held?

Answer

No. It is absent from the United Nations list of international days and weeks, where the only 12 April entry is the unrelated International Day of Human Space Flight, and no law or proclamation giving it official status was found, so it is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

18sources

18primary records

16independently dated

Consortium for Street Children2012

2011 (International Day for Street Children campaign site)

The organisers' own account of the first day, its London launch and its speakers.