AN SOS FOR THE OAS - 

Why are you not protecting the region's children???

By Bruce Harris - Executive Director 

Casa Alianza (Covenant House - Latin America)

"It should be no surprise to people that the plight of the great majority of children in the Americas can be described as nothing less than dire. More than half the population of the Americas is under the age of 18. But apart from during election campaigns, our political leaders are not placing enough real and proportional attention to the well being of this continent's children.

Children are forced to fight adult wars in Colombia; more than 750 poor children and youth have been murdered in Honduras in just over three years; the torture and murder of street children in Guatemala by members of the police; the trafficking of Mexican children to the United States for sexual exploitation; rampant child prostitution in Costa Rica; the production of child pornography in Brazil. The list goes on and on.

And this does not take into consideration the millions of Latino children who do not have enough food to eat. Millions of children who have no access to school because they are forced to work to support their disintegrated family's economy. Millions of street children who have been abandoned by their families and by the very society that created them.

The situation is shameful."

Find more about Casa Alianza at: www.Casa-Alianza.org

Central America and Mexico -- 2001 -- Casa Alianza - the Latin American branch of the New York-based child-advocacy organization Covenant House - reported an escalation of violations of the rights of children and adolescents in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Mexico, as documented by experts who infiltrated regional crime rings. ''Children in Mexico and Central America are being exploited, and neither society nor local authorities are doing enough to combat the problem,'' Casa Alianza director Bruce Harris, a British activist, told IPS.

Harris said it took a multi-disciplinary team of 56 experts 10 months to prepare the organization's first ''region-wide investigation of child trafficking, prostitution, pornography and sex tourism in Mexico and Central America.'' The probe was carried out in high-risk conditions in which the experts infiltrated rings of traffickers in minors, pedophiles and producers of child pornography, he underlined.

Psychologist Viviana Retana, [a] member of the team of investigators, told IPS that the trafficking of children as sexual merchandise was a constant phenomenon in Central America and Mexico, as well as other countries in Latin America. ''The rings of pedophiles and procurers are very well organized, operate with advanced technology and handle large amounts of money,'' she explained. The authors reported that procurers in Mexico buy 12 to 15-year- old girls from Central America - mainly Salvadorans and Hondurans - for 100 to 200 dollars.

The Full Casa Alianza Report on the commercial sexual exploitation of children in Central America and Mexico is now available.

(Very large file - (1.5 megabyte .pdf)

Related Article: CENTRAL AMERICA: Activists Infiltrate Child Sex Rings - April 5, 2002, Inter Press Service

UNICEF - Latin America/ Caribbean Region Office

Latin America -- 1999 -- "UNICEF, in support of the United Nations’ campaign for the eradication of violence against women, calls on society in Latin America and the Caribbean to eradicate violence against women and children. Violence is a problem that still remains largely hidden from the public eye..."

"Society’s silence is the main accomplice in allowing widespread impunity... The region will have to bring out into the open this increasingly disturbing reality; and it will have to struggle against the high degree to which society tolerates or practices inconceivable forms of aggression against the most vulnerable individuals in society. 

In commemorating International Women’s Day, Executive Director of UNICEF Carol Bellamy said that "it is everywhere, among rich and poor -- at home, in school, in the workplace and in the community. Yet on the eve of the 21st century, the vast scale of this outrage is still not widely acknowledged, nor even truly understood".

...Sexual harassment, maltreatment, child labor, violence in the home and sexual exploitation occur with such frequency that they can be considered a daily phenomenon. All violence leaves physical and psychological scars on their victims which are to a great extent irreversible. 

• More than 185 million children and adolescents live in Latin America and the Caribbean.

• It is believed that the great majority of these may be exposed to the perils of violence of which sexual harassment, maltreatment and rape are the most common forms.

UNICEF - Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean: "Stop the Violence Against Women and Girls!"  Women's Day Speech - 1999

More and More Girls Becoming Victims of Sexual Abuse and Exploitation

...Lamentably, not even the school environment is a safe haven from the threat of sexual exploitation. According to 1997 information from the Commission on Women and the Family in Guayaquil, Ecuador, approximately 25% of young girls suffered various forms of sexual abuse, and 8.1% were raped by their teachers.

No Child Deserves Mistreatment

...The Secretariat for Gender Affairs in Bolivia estimates that 100,000 acts of violence against women occur every year in that country, however, only one in five of these women report the incident.

From: Selected U.S. Agency for International Development Anti-Trafficking Efforts in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Latin America -- 2001

"An estimated 500,000 girls younger than 16 are in Prostitution in the northeast states of Argentina."

"According to a Brazilian Congressional Inquiry [1993], Brazil has 500,000 children in prostitution."

"Experts also estimate that there are 5,000 Colombian women in the Netherlands alone who are forced into prostitution."

"The U.S. Department of State conservatively estimates that 50,000 women and children are trafficked [illegally and against their will] into the United States annually."  "...1/3 [are] from Central and South America."

From: The Protection Project, Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC

The presence of sex tourism from Europe, North America, and Australia has significantly contributed to the trafficking of women and children. A growing number of sex tourists are going to Latin America, partly as a result of recent restrictions placed on sex tourism in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and other Asian countries.(19) Favored sex tourism destinations are Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Argentina.

Brazil has one of the worst child prostitution problems in the world.(20) More than 50,000 women from the Dominican Republic reportedly have been trafficked abroad.

Victims from Latin America and the Caribbean are trafficked to Western Europe and the United States. The Central American countries and Mexico are also transit countries for trafficking to the United States.

Congressional Research Service Report 98-649 C

Trafficking in Women and Children:
The U.S. and International Response

May 10, 2000 - by Francis T. Miko
Specialist in International Relations
Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division

With the Assistance of Grace (Jea-Hyun) Park
Research Associate, Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division

Organization of American States - Two Million children are sexually exploited in Latin America

UNICEF Regional Office for Latin America & the Caribbean

Latin America -- 

TRAFFICKING OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN FOR SEXUAL EXPLOITATION IN THE AMERICAS

An Introduction to Trafficking in the Americas

Written by Alison Phinney for the Inter-American Commission of Women (Organization of American States) and the Women, Health and Development Program (Pan American Health Organization)

From: Making the Harm Visible - Report from Latin America - by Zoraida Ramirez Rodriguez (Coalition Against Trafficking in Women-Latin America and the Caribbean).

Latin America -- "Sexual abuse and rape, important causes of HIV/AIDS infection among adolescent girls, has increased and now affects girls at younger ages worldwide (UNAIDS, 1999). In many countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, the age of sexual abuse and rape predominates in girls younger than 10 years old. A follow-up study done by the Latin American and Caribbean Women's Health Network in five countries demonstrated that this has been happening in Nicaragua, Peru and Colombia."

- Dr. Mabel Bianco, MD, 1998 -www.BodyPositive.com

Latin America - 1996 -- UNITED NATIONS (© 1996 Reuters) - Excerpt.  A popular Spanish-language talk show host told the United Nations Monday that Latin American men denied AIDS existed and hid behind a "machismo" tradition that ignored sexual realities.

"I am the lady who fights AIDS in Spanish," said Christina Saralegui, whose U.S.-based television show is broadcast to 100 million viewers in 18 countries.

She said countries like Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and even Puerto Rico went into "complete denial" about AIDS, believing "it is simply a lifestyle problem the United States has."

She spoke to a U.N. General Assembly session on AIDS along with Elizabeth Taylor, who urged the United Nations and the United States to lead a worldwide campaign to treat and cure AIDS victims, particularly the poor.

..."The doctors, the health professionals are not educated about AIDS prevention, about how to take care of people with aids," Saralegui said.

..."Neither [boys nor girls] received any proper sexual education in the home or in schools because it would be equated "with permission to have sex."

..."The most important thing is to get AIDS out of the closet. Let's get out of denial. It needs first to be faced if it is to be beaten," she said.  - Full Article