Human Trafficking in [Paraguay] [other countries]Street Children in [Paraguay Child Prostitution in [Paraguay] [other countries] |
Prevalence, Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children The |
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accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation
in 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. 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 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 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. The Institute del Manana ( ProJOVEN is building the first and only
residential-care home for troubled adolescents in El Abrigo (The House of Shelter and Care)
is operated by a group of Mennonites in In All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC §
107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use |
Human Trafficking in [Paraguay] [other countries]Street Children in [Paraguay Child Prostitution in [Paraguay] [other countries]