A/HRC/17/46 11. The Special Rapporteur emphasized that, to prevent this multidimensional and complex phenomenon, the international community had to take all the factors mentioned into account. It was important that children had access to protection mechanisms. It was also important that monitoring institutions be established and to ensure easy access for the most vulnerable children to child-sensitive counselling, complaint and reporting mechanisms. Effective prevention and action in the best interest of the child required a deep understanding of the different situations and risk factors facing children. 12. The President of Street Invest, Father Patrick Shanahan, explained that, in 1994, he carried out a straw poll among 100 youths living in the street in Accra, and asked them what they would do if they were given everything to leave the street tomorrow, such as paid school fees, desk fee, chair fee, book costs, event board and lodging, and whether they would leave. Two out of 100 said yes. One boy asked “School? What for? To wear a uniform for six years and end up back on the street?” Father Shanahan explained that need street children had to be observed from their perspective, not from ours. He advised against attempting to impose solutions on street children that would not be relevant or useful for their lives, and that the reality of street children had to be dealt with as the children were, rather than what we wanted them to be. Children should be heeded first to evaluate what was in their best interest, and appropriate actions would follow from there. 13. Children were on the streets; in order to find a development plan for them, workers should go to the streets to understand them. Father Shanahan quoted Benno Glauser, a tireless Swiss worker for street children: “Might growing up in the street, rather than just being a negative experience for children, also show new and potentially positive ways or even provide a new paradigm, for children growing up in disintegrating societies?” Street children had a right to live on the street and to have an adult that they trust. He urged one Government to volunteer to start a policy to accept a street child’s right to be on the street and to promote the role of the street worker in reconceptualizing the development of the street child. 14. The Commissioner and Rapporteur on Children of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, stated that street children in the Americas were among the main victims of violence in the world. Poverty was the main cause of this phenomenon and street children were often running away from violence, abuse and neglect suffered at home. States should provide special protection for children, especially street children. For many children in the street, however, the State was not a protector but the main perpetrator of violence, by commission or omission. Street children were often labelled as criminal gang members that should be taken off the streets for the sake of security. Such systematic repressive responses from States compromised international human rights standards, besides being ineffective and costly. 15. The Rapporteur stated that, in the past two decades, despite the efforts of some Governments to effectively protect the rights of street children, effective plans and a lack of services aimed at getting children off the streets had been absent. Despite their visibility, street children had more often served as the tragic illustration of neglect and vulnerability than as targets for positive programmes, policies and services. He emphasized that children on the streets had to be protected from State and other violence, and that the best way to deal with violence against children was to stop it before it happened. Freedom from all forms of violence, including corporal punishment, was the right of all children. In 2009, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights published a report, in which it stated that corporal punishment was a violation of human rights and that it was an obligation of all States to prohibit all forms of violence against children, in all contexts, wherever it might occur. That required investing into prevention programmes to address the underlying causes and establishing a strong legal framework not only grounded on sanctions, but also aimed at 5