'Adress Identification Center'

Jacob Ehrbahn

Politiken

With the breakdown of communist rule in Mongolia following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the first generation of  mongolian street children was born. The police estimate that more than one thousand children live in the streets of Ulan Bator but nobody knows the real number. The Adress Identification Center is a state run center under the police department, They are charged with finding street children to identify them and return them to their families or an orphanage. The children stay at the center for up to a week, before they are sent on. Here the police are checking for children in a district heating hole. During winthertime when temperatures drop as low as -45°c degrees, many street children survive by  staying in the channels of the district heating system underground.

Jacob Ehrbahn, "'Adress Identification Center'," in POYi Archive, Item #34423, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/34423 (accessed November 23, 2024).