Submitted by crinadmin on
Summary: Two-day workshop held in London
- YOUTH VIOLENCE IN LATIN AMERICA: Gangs, Street Children and Juvenile
Justice in Perspective
A two-day workshop on youth violence in Latin America, jointly organised
by the Crisis States Programme at the London School of Economics and the
Institute for the Study of the Americas, was held in London last week. The
workshop brought together researchers, NGOs and policy advisors working
on the issues of youth gangs, street children and juvenile justice to share
information from across Latin America and try to bridge the gap between
research and practice.
In recent years, crime rates have soared across Latin America, and in
Central America the homicide rate is higher than during the war years of
the 1980s. In an opening address, Gareth Jones and Dennis Rodgers of
the Crisis States Programme who chaired the meeting, talked about youth
violence as "standing out within this new landscape of brutality, with many
of the new victims being children and youth"; they also pointed out that
over 60 per cent of all homicides in the region are committed by 10 - 29
year olds.
The participants focused on the situation of youth gangs in Central
America - known as "maras" - which were founded in Los Angeles in the
1970s and 80s, and on young victims and perpetrators of violence in Brazil.
Wagner Dos Santos, a survivor of the 1993 Candelária massacre, gave a
powerful testimony of the night a gang of hooded men opened fire on over
50 street children sleeping near the Candelária Church, in Rio de Janeiro,
and his experience of helping to bring those responsible to justice.
Themes of the conference included the question of definitions and the
problem of talking about a "universal category of youth", and how
definitions of street children and youth gangs affect interventions; the lack
of knowledge about the scale of the youth gang phenomenon; and the
gendered nature of the violence: although most of the perpetrators are
male, female involvement is under-researched and many young women
play important supporting roles. Lainie Reisman, Coordinator of the Inter-
American Coalition for the Prevention of Violence, talked about the multiple
social, cultural and family-related factors which determine involvement in
youth gangs. These include a lack of positive role models in the family,
urban growth, a lack of educational and economic opportunities, drugs,
weak community organisations, a culture of violence, the impact of conflict,
indifference to inequality and marginality. Other presentations looked at
how structural violence including poverty, inequality and marginalisation,
interacts with the agency of children and youth; the extent to which youth
violence should be seen as a political issue; and issues of power - who
intervenes and why.
Governments in Central America - El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in
particular - have responded to the youth gang phenomenon and public
fear by criminalising tattoos and gang membership and granting broad
powers to detain and imprison young people they suspect of gang
involvement under legislation known as "Mano Dura" and "Mano Super
Dura" (heavy-hand). This has resulted in human rights violations such as a
lack of due process, the presence of death squads, and severe over-
crowding in detention units leading to riots and fires. All the participants
highlighted the importance of taking preventative measures to combat
youth violence to reduce the cost to young lives, the economy and to
regional and democratic stability. A strong focus of the presenters'
recommendations was the participation of young people themselves in
shaping their futures. Marie Wernham, Advocacy Officer for the Consortium
for Street Children, said that policies must be based on an understanding
of the life choices - or lack of choices - of children so as to expand the
available options and empower children in their decision-making. Irene
Rizzini and Udi Butler, researchers at CIESPI (the International Center for
Research and Policy on Childhood), discussed how children’s life histories
can contribute to policy which should be based on children’s experiences
and aspirations.
Professor Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the Independent Expert appointed by Kofi
Annan to lead the UN Study on Violence against Children, was invited to
give a lecture. Speaking about youth violence and social justice in Latin
America, he made a link between violence and the weakness of the
democratisation process. He said that achievements made in the
democratic sphere have for the most part been restricted to the
institutional level and have not been replicated in the socio-economic
situation of the population. Commenting on anti-gang measures taken by
Central American governments, he raised concerns that media outlets and
political elites were exaggerating the threat and delaying reforms to the
juvenile justice system. The fulfilment of human rights remains elusive in
Latin America for children in particular, despite the fact that all the
governments have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Pinheiro highlighted the repressive nature of the state in Latin America,
saying that the zero-tolerance approach to juvenile crime - which has been
favoured under both dictatorship and democracy - "may worsen the
situation, by appearing to ignore the root causes of the phenomenon". He
emphasised the importance of dealing with youth violence not just as a
security issue but as a human rights issue which demands the participation
of children and adolescents as full citizens.
More information about the workshop will be available shortly on the Crisis
States Programme website at www.crisisstates.com. The site will include a
discussion forum to follow up on some of the issues raised during the
workshop.
For more information, contact:
Dr. Gareth Jones or Dr. Dennis Rodgers
Crisis States Programme
London School of Economics (LSE)
Houghton Street, London WC2 2AE, UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 7955 710; Fax: +44 (0)20 7955 7412
Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
A photography exhibition by Donna DeCesare, "Hijos del Destino: Youth
Violence in the Americas", complemented the workshop. DeCesare’s
photographs document the life stories of young people involved in gangs.
She aims to inspire young people with her images "to question the way
things are" and to provide links to NGOs and activists to help young people
create different ‘destinies’. She is currently working on a bi-lingual website
as part of this project which will be launched in mid-2005 at:
www.destinyschildren.org
Owner: Jennifer ThomasAssociation: The Child Rights Information Network