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Article History

Received: 20 July 2025

Accepted: 20 January 2026

First Online: 2 February 2026

Declarations

:

: Ethical approval for this study was obtained from the National Child Protection Committee of MoGCSP. The study was conducted in strict accordance with the Helsinki Declaration on Ethical Principles for Research Involving Human Subjects. Informed consent and assent procedures were strictly followed. Given that the study involved children under the age of 18 years, written informed assent was obtained from all child participants prior to data collection. In cases where a parent or legal guardian accompanied the child to beg on the street, written informed consent was obtained from that person before the child was interviewed. For children without an accompanying parent or legal guardian, MoGCSP appointed trusted social workers to provide written informed consent on their behalf before the child was interviewed. Participation was entirely voluntary, and all child participants were informed, in age-appropriate language, of their right to decline participation or withdraw from the study at any point without any consequences.

: Consent for publication was obtained from all participants, who agreed to the inclusion of anonymised data and quotations in scholarly outputs (See Supplementary File 2).

: The authors declare no competing interests.