Torture in [Guatemala] [other countries]Human Trafficking in [Guatemala] [other countries]Street Children in [Guatemala Child Prostitution in [Guatemala] [other countries] |
Prevalence, Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children In the early years of the 21st
Century gvnet.com/streetchildren/Guatemala.htm
|
||
|
CAUTION: The following links
and accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the
situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** Street Children Surprisingly Healthy BBC News, 13 April, 2002 news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1920570.stm [accessed 19 May 2011] Researchers have
found that although the lives of these children can be fraught with danger,
they adapt physically to survive. 'RESILIENT' - "Their
health as measured by their BMIs doesn't prove that they live a fine life -
it is fraught with great danger, including murder and sexual exploitation,
especially for the girls - but it does confound our expectations. These kids are resilient and self-reliant
and adapt physically to the difficult conditions of homelessness. Although middle-class urban kids certainly
fare better, homeless urban children seem to be doing better health-wise than
they would if they lived in intact families in poor agricultural communities." Police Violence Against Street Children Human Rights Watch: Easy Targets - Violence
Against Children Worldwide, September 2001 www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/2001/children/5.htm [accessed 19 May 2011] They hit with their
rifles, or with sticks, on our backs and stomachs. And sometimes they
just punch us in the stomach with their hands. They also take our paint
thinner and pour it over our heads. They’ve done that to me five times.
It’s awful, it hurts really bad. It gets in
your eyes and burns. Thousands of
children living in Guatemala’s streets have faced routine beatings, thefts
and sexual assaults at the hands of the National Police and private security
guards. During a 1996 Human Rights Watch investigation, nearly every child we
spoke with told us of habitual assaults and thefts by the police. These
assaults occurred on busy city streets in broad daylight, on quiet streets in
the middle of the night, in alleys and deserted areas, and in police
stations. Often, they were witnessed by passersby or other police officers. A youth who spent
nine years on the street told us: The
police bother us every single day. They hit us and steal our money, our
shoes, our jackets. If you don’t give them what they
want, they’ll beat you up or arrest you . . . .We
can’t say anything, or they’ll hit us harder. Girls on the street
are additionally vulnerable to sexual attacks. Susana F., a sixteen-year-old,
reported that she was raped by two police officers while a third kept watch.
The officers threatened to put her in prison for having marijuana if she made
any noise. “I’m sure this has happened
to many other girls. But usually they won’t say anything about it. . . .Ugly
things happen on the street.” Guatemalan street
children have also been killed in extrajudicial executions. In September
1996, sixteen-year-old Ronald Raúl Ramos was shot
and killed by a drunken Treasury Police officer. More than ten other street
children in Guatemala were murdered that year under suspicious circumstances,
yet by April of the following year, all of the perpetrators were still at
large. ***
ARCHIVES *** UNICEF
– www.unicef.org/infobycountry/guatemala.html [accessed 19 May 2011] The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on
the Worst Forms of Child Labor www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/guatemala.htm [accessed 8 February 2011] INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Street children tend to be especially vulnerable to
sexual exploitation and other forms of violence, constituting a serious
problem in Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61729.htm [accessed 8 February 2011] CHILDREN
-
Credible estimates put the number of street children at five thousand
nationwide, approximately three thousand of them in The government
maintained one shelter each for girls and boys in Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 8
June 2001 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/guatemala2001.html [accessed 8 February 2011] [7] The Committee
notes with interest the Education Program for Working Children and
Adolescents (PENNAT) to assist children who work in markets, parks and the
streets in both urban and rural areas. [30] The Committee
is deeply disturbed by information that violence against children is
increasing. In particular, it notes with great concern that many children
fear for their lives because they are continually threatened and are victims
of violence, notably when they are living and/or working in the street but
also when they are at home. Of particular concern to the Committee is the
alleged involvement of the State Civil Police in some of the alleged cases of
violence and the lack of proper investigation of these cases by Guatemalan authorities. [54] The Committee
expresses its concern at the significant number of children living in the
streets and notes that assistance to these children is provided mainly by
non-governmental organizations. In light of article 6 of the Convention, serious
concern is expressed at allegations of rape, ill-treatment and torture,
including murder for the purpose of "social cleansing", of children
living in the streets. Inspire magazine www.inspiremagazine.org.uk/news.aspx?action=view&id=3457 [accessed 19 May 2011] A recently
published report by the Joint Council on International Children’s Services
has revealed that one child is abandoned in Morales Case Focused International
Attention on Plight, Rights of Street Children News office: University Relations, www.newswise.com/articles/view/544203/ [accessed 19 May 2011] As one might
expect, these children suffer profoundly and face enormous economic, political
and social challenges. In addition to economic poverty, which often leads to
malnutrition and even starvation, these children are exploited and victimized
by their own governments, usually by a police force. It has been extremely
difficult for human rights and development organizations – not to mention
victims and their families – to work within a given country’s legal system to
seek protection for these children. In the past decade or more, advocates
have relied on international human-rights law and treaties to try to force
governments to protect street children and provide for their welfare. One such treaty is
the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, which the Republic of
Guatemala ratified. In 1999, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found
Guatemala in violation of several provisions of the treaty due to the 1990
abduction, detention and murder of five street children, one of whom was Villagran Morales, by Guatemalan police. Two years later,
the court ordered the Guatemalan government to pay a total of $508,865 to the
surviving relatives of the murdered children. Villagran
Morales v. Guatemala was the first case in the history of the Inter-American
Court in which the victims of human rights violations were children. Fear and loathing in gangland Guatemala The Guardian, July 17, 2008 www.guardian.co.uk/journalismcompetition/gangland.guatemala [Last access date unavailable] The sun bakes the
potholed asphalt streets and concrete buildings along Avenida
Bolivar in the The children are wearing
a random assortment of second-hand clothes collected by a local catholic
church. They unknowingly support American sports teams, the names of which
are emblazoned across the backs of their torn T-shirts. Each of the
hollow-eyed children clutches a solvent-soaked rag, which they sniff
intermittently to numb their physical and emotional pain. Occasionally, for
no apparent reason, one of them will start to cry, the tears streaking their
dirty faces, mixing with runny snot as they try to wipe their faces with
their sleeves. Unfortunately, the
solvent also numbs their attention span, and Marcos and Katarina patiently
try to get the children to repeat the proper names of penis and vagina,
before reminding the kids of the golden rules – wear clean underwear, wash
your private parts once a day, and go to Medicins
sans Frontieres if you notice any unusual lumps. The children of the
Republic of El Gallito are the next recruits in the
hidden civil war that is raging in Guatemala. Marcos, from child protection organisation Casa Alianza,
wearily explains why the children in the street are usually never older than
11. After that, they are old enough to join the maras,
or organised youth gangs in the area, to be used as
foot-soldiers in a war that has become endemic in Guatemala and neighbouring countries. A Lamp That Sheds No Light Willy E. Gutman, www.hondurasweekly.com/a-lamp-that-sheds-no-light-201007312787/ [accessed 19 September 2011] Fiction also
trivializes fact. There is no romance in the life of street children, only
pain and hopelessness, hunger and fear, disease and death. Real street
children do not sport beguiling smiles. They are prone to misbehave. They
often stink. All could use a bath. But under the
grime, the air of defiance or the crushing indifference their feverish eyes
convey, there is a child, scared, vulnerable, far too young to taste life’s
bitter medicine, yet incurably old before his time. In the ghostly
twilight world of street children, there are no magic lamps to rub, no
benevolent, turbaned genies, no flying carpets, no protective amulets, no
healing philters; only evil spirits lurking, stalking easy prey. Unlike
Aladdin, street children do not amass fame and fortune, and no fairy prince
or princess will marry them in the end. Most never leave the streets. Many
don’t reach adulthood. Disease, hunger, drugs and bullets often cut their
lives short. Human Rights Watch - Street Children Human Rights Watch: Street Children At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 19 May 2011] In Not ready to go home yet Text Susan J. Alexis; photos by Joseph J. Delconzo, The World & I www.worldandi.com/newhome/public/2003/january/lfpub2.asp [accessed 19 May 2011] Her day starts at
5:30 a.m. Sandy-haired, blue-eyed, slim, and casually dressed, 32-year-old
Hanley Denning looks like any other American tourist or foreign student in
the colonial city of Antigua, Guatemala, as she heads for the bus. With
typical Latin American imprecision, it arrives sometime around 6:15 or 6:30;
Denning boards, along with locals, for the ride to the country's capital and
major population center, Guatemala City. An hour and a half
later she steps off on the city's northwest side and walks through an area of
graffiti-covered, sewerless houses. Stepping
gingerly over the leavings of mangy dogs and the garbage spill that the
children have scavenged from the dump to sort, clean, and sell, she passes a
string of children hauling more home. After three or
four blocks, the flies buzz thicker, vultures fly overhead, and the stench
grows noxious. Seemingly light-years away from the quaint streets of Antigua is the Guatemala’s violent present Paola RamÃrez
Orozco-Souel, LeMonde Diplomatique, September 13, 2006 At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly also be accessible [here] [accessed 23 September 2011] Violence against
Guatemalan women gets less media attention than the
notorious crimes against women in the sprawling metropolis of Casa Alianza
Legal Advisor Murdered www.ghrc-usa.org/Resources/2005/CasaAlianzaAdvisorMurdered.htm [accessed 23 September 2011] BACKGROUND
- Formed
in 1990 after the brutal murder of thirteen-year old Nahamán
Carmona López by the National Police, Casa Alianza’s Legal Program seeks to defend and promote the
rights of children, youth and young mothers. Perez Gallardo has served as an
Advisor to the Legal Program for the past six years. The fifty-six year old
lawyer was advising Casa Alianza on several pending
cases involving irregular adoptions, murders, sexual exploitation,
trafficking and other human rights violations against children. Richard Swift meets
an outspoken advocate for Bruce Harris, The New Internationalist
magazine, Issue 269, July 5, 1995 www.newint.org/features/1995/07/05/interview/ [accessed 19 May 2011] They know we are
not by ourselves. That’s why we have survived. It may seem naive to think your little
letter will have any effect as you sit there in your garden in Street Children in Guatemala One to One Children's Fund, February 18th
2003 At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 19 September 2011] FEBRUARY 5TH 2003 - The body of an
indigenous eleven-year-old homeless boy, Oscar, was found hidden in a sack in
Street Children in The Toybox
Charity At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly also be accessible [here] [accessed 23 September 2011] Many children in Rescuing Second-Generation Street Children
in Guatemala International Planned Parenthood
Federation, At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 19 May 2011] There are more than
5,000 youth between the ages of 10 and 23 living in the streets of Street Children in The Toybox
Charity www.donorflex.com/index.php/products/donorflex-client-case-studies/26-toybox-case-study.html [accessed 19 May 2011] FACTFILE - Herbert Paiz, director of El Castillo, Toybox's
partner charity in It’s very difficult
to tell, but it’s thought that there are 1,000-1,500 street children in
Guatemala City. In addition, there are thousands of children living at very
high risk. The Toybox Charity helps both. Rejected by
society, these children are regarded as 'disposable' and become victims of
harassment and violent abuse. Some are shot. Medecins
Sans Frontieres - Promoting Generics And Doctors Without Borders/Médecins
Sans Frontières (MSF), International Activity
Report 2004 - www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/ar/report.cfm?id=1003 [accessed 19 May 2011] Since 1999, MSF has
run a project in Guatemala City that provides free health care and
psychological counseling to more than 700 street children and young adults,
some of whom have been living in the streets for a decade or more. There are
high suicide and substance abuse rates among the street kids. MSF
psychologists and educators help them on a daily basis, providing basic
health care, accompanying them to hospitals and providing counseling to
improve their self-esteem. The team works alongside members of the street
community to raise awareness of the misery of street life with the aim of
relieving the discrimination many street kids face from authorities and
public services. The therapeutic day care center in Lomas de Santa Faz, a slum on the outskirts of Sexually
Transmitted Diseases In Solorzano E, Arroyo G, Santizo R, Contreras C, Gularte
M., Rev Col Med Cir Guatem. 1992 Oct-Dec;2
Suppl:48-51 www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12290625?dopt=Abstract [accessed 19 May 2011] Drug consumption,
sexual promiscuity, extreme poverty, and low educational level place street
children at high risk of sexually transmitted diseases. A prospective study
was conducted of 143 street children attending a sexually transmitted disease
clinic in Guatemala City over a three month period in 1991. 11 of the
children were aged 7-10 years, 47 were aged 11-14 years, and 85 were aged
15-18 years. 104 were male and 39 female. 26 were illiterate and the rest had
incomplete primary educations. All had been sexually abused. Over half had
had their first sexual experience with a relative. None had ever used
condoms. 101 of the children reported they had 1 or 2 sexual partners each
day, 6 had 3 or 4, and 36 had more than 4. 133 reported histories of sexually
transmitted diseases, of which 94 cases were ulcerative. 112 of the children
had genital herpes, 71 had gonorrhea, 39 had human papillomavirus, 19 had
vaginal trichomoniasis, 24 had chancroid,
and 6 each had vaginal candidiasis, early latent syphilis, and pubic pediculosis. All the children reported using alcohol,
tobacco, or marijuana. All used solvents and most used a variety of other
drugs. Street Children Surprisingly Healthy BBC News, 13 April, 2002 news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1920570.stm [accessed 16 May 2011] Researchers have
found that although the lives of these children can be fraught with danger,
they adapt physically to survive. 'RESILIENT' - "Their
health as measured by their BMIs doesn't prove that they live a fine life -
it is fraught with great danger, including murder and sexual exploitation,
especially for the girls - but it does confound our expectations. These kids are resilient and self-reliant
and adapt physically to the difficult conditions of homelessness. Although middle-class urban kids certainly
fare better, homeless urban children seem to be doing better health-wise than
they would if they lived in intact families in poor agricultural
communities." Inter
Casa Alianza,
June 13th, 2001 www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/Countries/Americas/Future/Text/Guatemala006.htm [accessed 19 May 2011] The Inter American Court
on Human Rights (“the Court”) today ordered the State of Guatemala to pay a
total of more than half a million dollars to the families of five street
children who were brutally tortured and murdered by two National Policemen in
June 1990. This is the first ever case in the 20 year history of the Court
where the victims of a resolved case were children. On an overcast June 16th, 1990, street children Julio Roberto
Caal Sandoval (15); Jovito
Josue Juarez Cifuentes
(17) and their street youth friends Henry Giovani
Contreras (18) and Federico Clemente Figueroa Tunchez
(20), were sitting in an empty parking lot at the corner of Several days later,
the mutilated bodies of the homeless kids were found in a residential area
called “Bosques de San Nicolas”, with their eyes
gouged out and bullets through the back of their heads. Nine days after the
initial murders, yet another friend of the four victims, Anstraum
Villagran, was shot dead in the same parking lot by
the same two policemen. Police Violence Against Street Children Human Rights Watch: Easy Targets - Violence
Against Children Worldwide, September 2001 www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/2001/children/5.htm [accessed 19 May 2011] They hit with their
rifles, or with sticks, on our backs and stomachs. And sometimes they
just punch us in the stomach with their hands. They also take our paint
thinner and pour it over our heads. They’ve done that to me five
times. It’s awful, it hurts really bad.
It gets in your eyes and burns. Thousands of
children living in Guatemala’s streets have faced routine beatings, thefts
and sexual assaults at the hands of the National Police and private security
guards. During a 1996 Human Rights Watch investigation, nearly every child we
spoke with told us of habitual assaults and thefts by the police. These
assaults occurred on busy city streets in broad daylight, on quiet streets in
the middle of the night, in alleys and deserted areas, and in police
stations. Often, they were witnessed by passersby or other police officers. A youth who spent
nine years on the street told us: The
police bother us every single day. They hit us and steal our money, our
shoes, our jackets. If you don’t give them what they
want, they’ll beat you up or arrest you . . . .We
can’t say anything, or they’ll hit us harder. Girls on the street
are additionally vulnerable to sexual attacks. Susana F., a sixteen-year-old,
reported that she was raped by two police officers while a third kept watch.
The officers threatened to put her in prison for having marijuana if she made
any noise. “I’m sure this has happened
to many other girls. But usually they won’t say anything about it. . . .Ugly
things happen on the street.” Guatemalan street
children have also been killed in extrajudicial executions. In September
1996, sixteen-year-old Ronald Raúl Ramos was shot
and killed by a drunken Treasury Police officer. More than ten other street
children in Guatemala were murdered that year under suspicious circumstances,
yet by April of the following year, all of the perpetrators were still at
large. Cable News Network CNN, February 14, 1998 edition.cnn.com/WORLD/9802/14/guatemala.street.kids/ [accessed 19 May 2011] The thousands of
street urchins who inhabit THEY CALL IT 'SOCIAL
CLEANSING'
- But these street kids also face another menace -- death squads practicing what
is referred to in Guatemala as "social cleansing." There are certain groups in society,
including security forces, who feel that by torturing, kidnapping and
murdering them, they'll teach the others a lesson to leave the street. Police Abuses - Street children march in
Guatemala Megan Coleman, Serrina
Duly, Nicole Freeland, Jonah Kane-West, and Marc McCloskey, created this site
as part of a collaborative web project, "Children Around the World" At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 19 May 2011] One of the biggest
problems for children living on the streets in Police abuse in Guatemala is one of the big problems that street children face, but it is getting less over time. Much of the police abuse is not done by the actual Guatemalan police. There are many private police officers in Guatemala who no longer work for the government, but work privately who commonly abuse street children. Amnesty International, PUBLICAI Index: AMR
34/016/2002, UA 72/02 Fear for safety 11 March 2002 www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR34/016/2002/en/39ff70d9-d883-11dd-ad8c-f3d4445c118e/amr340162002en.html [accessed 19 May 2011] The offices of Casa
Alianza, an organization that helps street
children, were broken into on 7 March, and files containing confidential
information on children who have allegedly been ill treated by police were
ransacked. Amnesty International is concerned for the safety of both Casa Alianza employees and the children it supports. Torture Of Street Children Bruce Harris, Executive Director, Latin
American Programmes, Casa Alianza,
November 16th, 1995 At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly also be accessible [here] [accessed 19 May 2011] During the past
five years, Casa Alianza's Legal Aid Office for
Street Children in Continued Abuse of Street Children Bruce Harris, Executive Director, Latin American
Programmes, Casa Alianza,
January 24th, 1996 At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 19 May 2011] With the changes of
government in State Brutality Instituto Austriaco
Guatemalteco.
Seminario Los ninos
de la calle: Una realidad alarmante, (Guatemala:
IAG, 1992), 139-40. At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] ß Note:
font color is white [accessed 19 May 2011] In the Robbed of Humanity: Lives of Urbano Latino magazine,
February 1999. Reviewed by Christy Damio pangaea.org/robbed_humanity_street_children/reviews.htm [accessed 19 May 2011] REVIEWS AND COMMENTS
- Tierney
describes, discusses and tries to explain the horrors faced by All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this webpage as: Patt,
Prof. Martin, "Street Children - |
Torture in [Guatemala] [other countries]Human Trafficking in [Guatemala] [other countries]Street Children in [Guatemala Child Prostitution in [Guatemala] [other countries]