Human Trafficking in  [Paraguay]  [other countries]
Street Children in  [Paraguay]  [other countries]
Child Prostitution in  [Paraguay]  [other countries]
 

Prevalence, Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children

Republic of Paraguay                                                                 [ Country-by-Country Reports ]

The Republic of Paraguay [map] is located in S central South America and is enclosed by Bolivia (N & W), Brazil (E), and Argentina (S & W).  Its capital and largest city is Asunción.  Despite political instability, the Code for Children approved in mid-2001 is being implemented.  Paraguay has a market economy marked by a large informal sector.  This sector features both re-export of imported consumer goods to neighboring countries as well as the activities of thousands of micro-enterprises and urban street vendors.  A large percentage of the population derives their living from agricultural activity, often on a subsistence basis.

 

CAUTION:  The following links and accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Paraguay.  Some of these links may lead to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false.  No attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content.

UNICEF - The Big Picture

U.S. Dept of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs

CURRENT GOVERNMENT POLICIES AND PROGRAMS TO ELIMINATE THE WORST FORMS OF CHILD LABOR - The Ministry of Public Health’s Social Welfare Office has developed ongoing programs that offer financial help to vulnerable groups including street children.  The Government of Spain’s Development Agency is supporting a program to reform curriculum, provide educational services to adolescents who do not have a primary school education, and address the educational needs of street children.

Bur of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor - Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005

SECTION 6 WORKER RIGHTS – [d] Although the labor code prohibits work by children under age 14, in August the press reported government research documenting that approximately 40 percent of the children in primary grades worked in street vending jobs during school hours in Ciudad del Este.

The 2001 census reported that 5 percent of the workforce was under the age of 14. According to the NGO Organization for the Eradication of Child Labor (COETI), 265 thousand children, or 13.6 percent of those between the ages of 5 and 17, worked outside their homes, many in unsafe conditions. In supermarkets, boys as young as age 7 bagged and carried groceries to customers' cars for tips. Thousands of children in urban areas, many of them younger than 12 years of age, were engaged in informal employment, such as selling newspapers and sundries and cleaning car windows. Many of the children who worked on the streets suffered from malnutrition and disease and lacked access to education. Some employers of the estimated 11,500 young girls working as criadas denied them access to education and mistreated them. According to the Secretariat for Children and Adolescents, many of these children were also sexually abused.

Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2001

[47] The Committee expresses its deep concern at the increasing number of children who are exploited economically, in particular those under 14 years of age. In particular, it notes cases of abuse of girls in domestic service and a large number of children working in the streets, often at night and in unhealthy conditions, especially in the capital, Asunción. It also notes that ILO Convention No. 138 concerning Minimum Age for Admission to Employment has not been ratified.

The Specific Situation Of The Street Children

More than 50% of Paraguay’s population is younger than 17. One in five children has to work more than 9 hours per day. Official figures estimate that 400,000 children are working in Paraguay. They work on highways, at street corners, bus or train stations and in private homes. Often they are runaways from rural areas, who tried to escape the abuse, violence and hunger at home, and who ended up in prostitution, violence and drugs.

The Boys From Paraguay

Most of the children there had parents who lived in the city but couldn't afford to look after them, were in prison, or had left for Brazil to find work. Some had been abused. Most of them had a pretty rough story to tell.

Re-Solv Factsheets

The problem of solvent abuse isn’t confined to the United Kingdom. Incidents of sniffing and abuse have been reported worldwide, although the nature and extent of the problem differs from country to country and young people may sniff for a number of different reasons. In Paraguay, for example, it is thought that 80-85% of street children have experimented with VSA.

The protection of street children

The game of realities is terrible. It is to be hoped that a country that has a National Plan of Action against CSEC (Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children) would search for real solutions to its social problems. Yet plans, codes and laws run the risk of being little more than papers filed away in bureaucratic offices, and the media’s coverage of issues related to these plans, codes and laws is fleeting.

El Embudo, Experiences And  Serious Problems Facing Boys & Adolescents In Prison

We started to look at the rural youth who come to the city, face miserable conditions, have no work and enter into prostitution or delinquency," explained Soares. "We're trying to stimulate a discussion on the concepts of justice – and how our society condones its own wrong doings”

Org of American States - Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

126. The Commission cannot neglect to mention an extremely serious act that was harmful to street children, which led to a petition that it received on December 23, 2000. The arrest on November 27, 28, and 29, 2000, of boys and girls who work in the streets by juvenile court judge Mercedes Brítez de Buzó ”was a poverty cleansing operation on the streets of the capital”

Statement By The Consortium For Street Children To Un Commission On Human Rights

Specific examples of alleged violations that have come to the attention of the Consortium for Street Children over the past year include: Paraguay – the inhuman conditions and ill-treatment, sometimes amounting to torture, endemic in the Panchito López Juvenile Detention Center, as highlighted in a recent report by Amnesty International (April 2001) and in the report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture (E/CN.4/2001/66, para. 835)

CESCR Concluding Observations: PARAGUAY

15. The Committee is particularly concerned about the large number of child workers and street children in Paraguay. It draws attention to the inadequacy of the measures taken by the Government to combat these phenomena, which are serious violations of the fundamental rights of the child.

27. The Committee recommends that the State party should launch a program, in cooperation with UNICEF and ILO, to combat the exploitation of child labor and the abandonment and exploitation of street children.

Institute of Tomorrow

The Institute del Manana (Institute of Tomorrow) is a residential program for boys, patterned after to Boys Town in the U.S..  Boys who have had some contact with the law live, work and attend school in the facility on a full time basis.

ProJOVEN Home

ProJOVEN is building the first and only residential-care home for troubled adolescents in Paraguay.

El Abrigo

El Abrigo (The House of Shelter and Care) is operated by a group of Mennonites in Asuncion. The shelter is designed for street kids and provides a loving, predictable atmosphere in which young children thrive. El Abrigo houses boys and girls ages 6-13 in clean, well kept rooms equipped with showers, toilets, bunk beds and desks for studying. The staff at the shelter use a point system with the children to motivate appropriate behavior.

Don Bosco Roga

In Asuncion street children present a very big problem. A full 81% of all children who work in the streets have families, but these families are extremely dysfunctional. The children must bring home a specified amount of money each night, or they are punished by their parents. Only 19% of all street children have no families.

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Human Trafficking in  [Paraguay]  [other countries]
Street Children in  [Paraguay]  [other countries]
Child Prostitution in  [Paraguay]  [other countries]