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 -
2000 to 2010 gvnet.com/streetchildren/Guatemala.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 *** 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 [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 - |
Human Trafficking in [Guatemala] [other countries]Street Children in [Guatemala Child Prostitution in [Guatemala] [other countries]