A new campaign has been launched in El Salvador to stop more children ending up on the streets.

The Red Ligh campaign will see Christian charity Toybox carry out prevention work with families and vulnerable children to stop them going onto the streets and work with children who are already there.

Toybox, which works with street children across South America, will also advocate for measures to tackle the reasons why children end up on the streets.

There are an estimated 1.8 million children aged 5 to 17 in some kind of labour. The work is mostly exploitative and includes working in rubbish dumps and factories.

Toybox warned that street children were getting caught up in the culture of violence in El Salvador, known as the murder capital of Central America. It said some 80 per cent of street children had suffered some form of violence.

"A country of only 6.2 million people, El Salvador means ‘Land of the Saviour’. But, as Toybox have discovered, it is very far from heaven for many children," said a spokesperson for the ministry.

Its Red Alert campaign is being supported by popular Christian authors and speakers Adrian and Bridget Class, who recently travelled to El Salvador to see the work of Toybox first hand.

One former street child, named only as Esteban, is raising awareness of the plight of street children after being cared for by a Toybox-supported project. He fled to the streets after members of the gang he used to belong to started to hound him and his family when he decided to leave.

During their visit, they met some of the children living on the streets of gang-rife capital San Salvador. One group found sniffing glue out on the streets late one night included children as young as five.

Bridget Plass said: “The little bit of light left in the eyes of these small ones is going to go out unless we do something to help.”

Toybox said the Red Light initiative would empower street children to know and claim their rights and to speak out for justice for children in their country.