Street children of Ulan Bator, Mongolia

NPPA Best of Photojournalism 2004

Winners of the NPPA's annual awards for excellence in photojournalism are now online, including this stunning series of images of street children living in the channels of the district heating system underground of Ulan Bator.

With the breakdown of communist rule in Mongolia following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the first generation of street children was born. An effect of the abrupt transition to a market economy was unemployment, since numbers of state owned businesses were forced to shut down. For many families this meant the beginning of a social deroute of alcoholism, violence and abuse. The children of these families have largely been left to their own devices because of the lack of a proper social safety net. The police estimate that more than one thousand children live in the streets of Ulan Bator but nobody knows the real number . In the coldest months of the year when temperatures drop as low as 45 c degrees, many street children survive by staying in the channels of the district heating system underground . A group of about 10 children live in this district heating hole. Surderdene and Badamsuren, the two girls in the group are doing their make-up.