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The Special Rapporteur on Guatemala for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Víctor Abramovich, will visit the country for the 125th Special Session of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which will be held in Guatemala from July 17 to 21, 2006. A request for the visit was made by Guatemalan Human Rights Ombudsman Dr. Sergio Fernando Morales Alvarado, who has raised concerns about the situation of children’s rights in the country. In February this year the Ombudsman presented a detailed report to the President’s Security Ministry, setting out the characteristics of violent deaths in the country and a raft of seven concrete proposals to tackle the situation.
The situation of children in Guatemala is extremely worrying. According to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, many children in Guatemala are dying of hunger and losing their faculties from problems relating to food insecurity and malnutrition. Children and elderly people are most affected by infectious and nutrition-related illnesses. The maternal mortality rate is alarming (153 of every 100,000 births); deaths are most prevalent among indigenous women and women who live in rural areas. Eighty per cent of births are attended by midwives who do not have the necessary support, training or minimum basic equipment. The infant mortality rate is 44 per 1000 live births and the child mortality rate is 59 per 1000 live births.
Children’s rights are violated in many other ways in Guatemala: child prostitution, trafficking in persons and illegal adoptions. In addition, approximately one million children have been working in hazardous conditions since they were five with no state controls.
Many babies, children and young people as well as babies who have not yet been born, have died as a result of armed violence in recent months and the perpetrators are rarely brought to justice.
The Ombudsman is deeply concerned about the levels of generalised violence across the country. However, in the midst of this indiscriminate violence, armed attacks against children and young people are multiplying to an alarming degree and law enforcement agencies do not have the capacity to pursue and bring to justice the perpetrators of such crimes.
In the month of January 2006 alone, 54 children were murdered, and 71 injured. And the violence is escalating: during the months of February and March 2006 the media reported 39 cases of children being murdered.
According to data collected by the Ombudsman's Office, during 2004 410 murders of children were reported and in 2005 there were 412. The 54 cases counted in January 2006 represent an increase of 17 per cent compared with January 2005.
The motives for the murders are different, however, they are mostly committed with firearms. The number of deaths increased this year by 14 per cent against 2004.
Examples of cases:
Osmar Manuel Alejandro Muxnal Hidalgo, five, was shot in the head (17/03/06); Catherine Rodríguez, 10 months, and Henry del Cid, six, were injured by a grenade (19/03/06); José Ángel Ramírez Ortiz, 18 months, was injured by a bullet (20/03/06); Josué Haroldo Ramírez Cardona died after being shot in the head.
On the morning of 23 of March, Gaudy Rebeca Escobar Villalta, 11, was shot in the head and died while walking to school with her classmates, Josué Eliú, 9, and his sister Margarita Pérez López were injured in the armed attack. These attacks took place in zone 6 of San José Las Rosas, in the department of Guatemala metropolitan district. The children were victims of a group of criminals, who, allegedly, according to information given by neighbours, were extorting money from the owners of the educational centre.
Four days after this bloody incident, on 27 March, an 11-year-old boy was kidnapped and then murdered. Attempts were made to minimise the incident by saying that the boy was a 13-year-old adolescent and that there were signs that he had connections with gang members.
In Guatemala, according to Article 1 of the Political Constitution of the Republic, the State protects the person and the family and, according to Article 3, the State guarantees and protects human life from conception, as well as the integrity and security of the person; the text states in Article 51 that the State will protect the physical, mental and moral health of children.
All people and institutions are obliged to respect the best interests, protection and development of the child.
Guatemala is a State party to the seven human rights treaties of the UN system. It has also ratified all the important instruments of the regional Inter-American system, of the Organization of American States (OAS). It was the sixth country to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Ley de Protección Integral de la Niñez y la Adolescencia (the Protection of Children Act) came into force in July 2003.
In spite of the broad normative framework which obliges the State of Guatemala to guarantee fundamental rights, the situation of generalised violence seriously jeopardises human rights in the country, and the progress made in strengthening the democratic system after more than thirty years of intra-state armed conflict and the signing of the Peace Accords. However, these accords have been poorly implemented. The indiscriminate use of arms in the form of crime, organised crime and violence seriously affect the poorest and most vulnerable sectors of the population. A report by the Ombudsman presented on 19 April 2006 reveals that approximately 1.5 million unregistered firearms are in circulation. Ninety-five per cent of violent deaths are committed with firearms, according to the National Civil Police (PNC).
These conditions exacerbate poverty and indigence for large sectors of the population which has been fundamentally determined by various historical factors and the refusal to change national policies, ethnic and gender exclusion and discrimination, the fact that most of the land is in the hands of a few, and the lack of employment and educational opportunities.
Poverty in Guatemala is severe. Fifty-six per cent, or approximately 6.4 million people, live in a situation of poverty and some 16 per cent in indigence (2000). Poverty is predominantly rural and more prevalent among the indigenous population. More than 81 per cent of the poor and more than 93 per cent of those living in extreme poverty live in the countryside. Seventy-six per cent of the indigenous population is poor compared with 41 per cent of the non-indigenous population.
The Ombudsman made a public call for urgent action by the authorities to implement prevention programmes and take measures to protect children and families from violence in the country.
In this report it is made clear that the PNC is becoming increasingly part of the problem rather than the solution. As a result, most of the proposals made by the institution are directed at strengthening the PNC, as this is the weak link in the chain of the citizens’ security system.
The institution proposes a Multi-Sectoral Commission, with international support, which would be responsible for reforming the PNC; measures to make actions by law-enforcement agencies transparent; it recommends that an Inter-Institutional Commission studies and makes recommendations to eradicate the practice of social cleansing which persists in this country. However, the only official response to these seven proposals, of which only three are outlined here, has been silence: the Security Ministry has not even acknowledged receipt of these proposals.
The people of Guatemala reject these violent incidents and demand that the State of Guatemala takes concrete steps to prevent the deaths of more children and young people and to investigate and bring to justice those responsible. Failure to do so makes the State complicit in the murder of, on average, two children every day.