Human Trafficking in [Bolivia] [other countries]Street Children in [Bolivia Child Prostitution in [Bolivia] [other countries] |
Prevalence, Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children In the early years of the 21st
Century - 2000 to 2010 gvnet.com/streetchildren/Bolivia.htm
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CAUTION: The following links and accompanying text have been culled
from the web to illuminate the situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** SOS Children in South America: Family Strengthening and
Street Children SOS Children's Villages www.street-children.org.uk/samericanstreetchildren/bolivia [accessed 6 April 2011] STREET CHILDREN IN ***
ARCHIVES *** UNICEF – www.unicef.org/infobycountry/bolivia.html [accessed 6 April 2011] The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on the Worst Forms
of Child Labor www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/bolivia.htm [accessed 23 January 2011] INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - In urban areas, children shine shoes, sell goods, and assist
transport operators. Children also
work as small-scale miners, and have been used to sell and traffic
drugs. Some children are known to work
as indentured domestic laborers and prostitutes. CURRENT
GOVERNMENT POLICIES AND PROGRAMS TO ELIMINATE THE WORST FORMS OF CHILD LABOR - In August 2004, the U.S. Department of Agriculture
announced it will provide funds for agricultural commodities for school meals
in Human Rights Reports » 2005
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61717.htm [accessed 23 January 2011] CHILDREN - Public schooling was provided up
to age 17 or grade 8; the law requires all children to complete at least 5
years of primary school; primary education was free and universal.
Enforcement of the education law was lax, particularly in rural areas, where
more than half of the primary schools offered only three of eight grades. An
estimated 50 percent of children completed primary school, and an estimated
26 percent graduated from high school Physical and psychological abuse
in the home was a serious problem. Corporal punishment and verbal abuse were
common in schools. Children from 11 to 16 years of age may be detained
indefinitely in children's centers for suspected offenses or for their own
protection on the orders of a social worker. The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF)
estimated that approximately 13 thousand children lived in institutions where
their basic rights were not respected. There also were many children living
on the streets of major cities. SECTION 6
WORKER RIGHTS – [d]
Urban children sold goods, shined shoes, and assisted transport operators. Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of
the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 28 January 2005 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/bolivia2005.html [accessed 23 January 2011] [65] The Committee expresses
concern at the rise in the number of street children in the State party. Nun helps Barbara J. Fraser, Catholic News Service CNS, EL ALTO www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0901052.htm [accessed 6 April 2011] Daniel Escalante remembers the
exact day he came in from the cold: March 16, 2000. He was living in and
around the cemetery in La Paz, more than two miles high in the Andes
Mountains, where temperatures plunge as soon as the sun goes down. By day,
Escalante and his teenage friends would do odd jobs or shine shoes to earn a
few cents to buy a watered-down bottle of alcohol to drink or glue to sniff.
Then two of the boys died, one of a liver ailment and one from the cold.
"That had a big impact on me. I decided I didn't want to die that
way," said Escalante, 26. "I have buried friends since I was 10
years old." As Escalante remembers it, they
rode to the end of the bus line, then walked and walked across the empty
landscape until at last they reached a plot of land that Sister Doris'
community had purchased. And there, brick by brick, they started building a
home. El Alto's Light of Hope Center is now a beacon for boys living on the
streets in La Paz, but Sister Doris knows that its hold on them is tenuous.
The center is home to 18 boys, with beds for about a dozen more. Some stay
for awhile, then succumb to the lure of the streets. "It's not easy for
them to give up alcohol and sniffing glue," Sister Doris said.
"Some fall by the wayside."
Like the prodigal son, however, they are welcomed back. And some come
home to die. Bolivia's shoeshine outcasts pin hopes on Morales Simon Gardner, Reuters, www.reuters.com/article/2008/08/09/us-bolivia-morales-poor-idUSN0948500520080809 [accessed 6 April 2011] His dark eyes glinting from behind
a black woolen ski mask to hide his identity, 22-year-old shoeshiner
Abel Alvarez is praying Bolivian President Evo
Morales wins a recall vote. At the
bottom of the ladder in South America's poorest country, former street urchin
Alvarez and fellow shoeshiners as young as seven
pepper the streets of La Paz, and complain they are shunned as
untouchables. They wear masks so
classmates cannot recognize them as they earn 35-50 bolivianos
($5-$7) on a good day shining shoes -- the underclass in a land where some 60
percent of the population of about 10 million is poor. Local doctor helps 'street children' find new home Mira Vale, Correspondent, GateHouse
News Service, [accessed 6 April 2011] Huang finally got his wish when he
met a boy who had once lived on the streets of He was able to meet the children
only in the middle of the night because most of them must stay awake until
sunrise, sniffing paint thinner to keep warm. Franz Chávez, Inter Press
Service News Agency IPS, www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41025 [accessed 6 April 2011] Yovana and Óscar,
two adolescents who were brought in off the street, remember when the young
Italian man would push through the brush surrounding the spot where they
slept under a bridge in a La Paz neighbourhood,
ignoring their hostility while offering hot milk and bread. The two youngsters admitted that they at
first treated the kind young blond man with distrust, but said they
eventually accepted his invitation to abandon the violent world of drugs and alcohol
that they inhabited. Their time on the streets left
them with scars on their arms from the self-harm they used to engage in, an
increasingly common behaviour among troubled
youngsters, who cut themselves, according to experts, to seek a kind of
relief from unbearable psychological or emotional situations. Óscar openly
described to IPS his past on the streets, when he panhandled and robbed to
survive. He said he had "several specialties" when it came to
stealing. But with a newborn baby in
their arms, the young couple now envision a better
future for themselves. Yovana remembers Bertozzi’s advice: "Change for the sake of your
little son; the doors of this home will always be open for your
recovery." "He was a father
to the poor and to the children on the streets," said Hernaiz. Councillor seeks help for Sandy McKenzie, Evening Gazette, Jan 4 2008 ts5.gazettelive.co.uk/2008/01/councillor_seeks_help_for_boli.html [accessed 6 April 2011] Cllr Michna
and Janet now want to raise more cash for the project. It works with other
bodies to help the 3,000 children living on La Paz’s streets. The children, aged six to 15 years, spend
their days shining shoes or begging for money. At night, they find what shelter they can.
Many have small houses made of corrugated steel or cardboard. For those children choosing to remain on
the streets the project offers help with medical care, food, clothing, social
support and education. For the
children who agree to come off the streets the project runs
residential units. Teatro Trono:
Youth Theater in Benjamin Dangl, "The Price
of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1045/1/ [accessed 6 April 2011] At Teatro
Trono, located in El Alto, a sprawling city
neighboring Their book, El mañana
es hoy, contains stories
of Teatro Trono told by
the actors. Chila, whose family’s alcoholism forced
him into homelessness at age nine, said the street was his home. There he
united with his friends and shared food, spoils from robberies, and drugs
until he found Trono. "We have reconstructed a
family [for street children]," Nogales says. "Now many of them are
teachers here." Though the theater started out working with homeless
children, Trono now works more on prevention rather
than rehabilitation, with outreach efforts that seek to stop children from
becoming drug addicts. Bolivian leader opens his doors Reuters, 13 February 2008 hwtheworldgame.sbs.com.au/2006-world-cup/news/623575/Bolivian-leader-opens-his-doors [accessed 6 April 2011] SOS Children in SOS Children's Villages www.street-children.org.uk/samericanstreetchildren/bolivia [accessed 6 April 2011] STREET CHILDREN IN Abandoned Street Children Turn To
Drugs Christian B. Schaeffler,
Editor-in-Chief, Adventist Press Service APD, December 31, 1998 www.wfn.org/1999/01/msg00011.html [accessed 6 April 2011] The economic realities of stark
poverty are forcing children out of their homes onto New KHouse
Opens in Kid Link, December
12, 2002 – Source: www.kidlink.org/kie/america/bo/news.html www.politicsonline.com/content/main/search/local_news_search.asp?locale=Bolivia&cmd_country=YES [accessed 6 April 2011] Two blue, mobile containers,
filled with computers and connected to the Internet, opened their
doors to street kids and schools of Life Outreach International, lifetoday.org/outreaches/life-centers/bolivia/ [accessed 6 April 2011] With poor health conditions,
serious diseases, unsafe drinking water, malnutrition, and inadequate
housing, many of Programa www.iisd.org/50comm/commdb/desc/d34.htm [accessed 6 April 2011] There are approximately 400
children ranging in ages from six to 18 who live on the streets of Description And Activities Of Amanecer arabinfomall.bibalex.org/En/OrgData.aspx?orgid=2470§ionid=3 [accessed 19 September 2011] Amanecer was started by a catholic order,
the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in 1981. They were motivated by
the increasing number of abandoned children living on the streets of the city
as a result of poor economic conditions.
Many recently unemployed miners were moving to the city in a generally
vain attempt to find work. They live in basic conditions in slums on the edge
of the city with high rates of alcoholism and domestic abuse. Their children
suffered the most with many being abandoned and others running away from
abusive situations. Volunteers helping street children - Bruce Bolivia -
S.O.S. Bolivia [accessed 6 April 2011] HOW OUR PROJECT WORKS - We go into the poorest
communities where :the highest concentrations of
out-of-school children can be found: and we recruit them. When we have
enough, we either open our own school or else gain the use of a classroom in
a local state school: and there we begin the rehabilitation and education of
these children. 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 - |
Human Trafficking in [Bolivia] [other countries]Street Children in [Bolivia Child Prostitution in [Bolivia] [other countries]