Child trafficking is one of the darkest chapters of the history of Latin American military dictatorships. However, during the time of the sunglass-wearing dictators is over, remains the trafficking of children is widespread.
Street children in Guatemala: poverty and impunity conducive to the trafficking of children in Latin America
The Peruvian population is horrified, as the result of a police investigation into a suspected Ring of child traffickers is well known in the Peruvian city of Arequipa. In the centre of the former chief of police of the country, Raúl Becerra. He is said to have been the right Hand of a child-trafficking ring. The gang is said to have held pregnant women and forced their children to give away.
Also if this is the case in Peru, which is particularly spectacular – the trafficking of children in Latin America is not uncommon. According to various aid organizations, it is a frightening phenomenon in all the countries of the Region.
Also, public servants are the perpetrators
The criminal gangs specialise in different areas of the Kinderraubs. In the main, but it comes to illegal adoptions. In a DW interview, Juan Martín Pérez García, Director of the NGO network Redlamyc told that criminal organizations often worked with officials of the state, in order to get babies and children for adoption. “Take advantage of the weakness of the institutions in their country, and the incomplete or non-existent laws. Sometimes the adoptive family does not know, in what way is she an adopted child is,” says Pérez García.
Particularly dramatic is the situation in Guatemala is. Since the 1980s, the Central American country is the leader in the criminal world market for illegal adoptions. The increase in the number of kidnappings since 2013 and 2014, as well as the alleged participation of health professionals are an ideal breeding ground for the trafficking of children, experts agree. A climate of impunity would be.
Victims of child trafficking: Often poor and alone
The children’s Fund, UNICEF, is warning for years that poverty is a crucial factor for the trafficking of children. Especially indigenous girls and boys from poor backgrounds were at risk. Trafficking of children is therefore often also social Problem and one that can also be related to ethnicity.
Also children who are alone on the road in the US, can be victims of child trafficking
Meredith Fabian, an expert of the Foundation Casa Alianza, working in several Latin American countries for the rights of the child emphasizes the special risk in the case of street children. “The protection of the family or the school is missing,” she says in a DW interview. Especially the unaccompanied minors, migrants, the move, like right now, in larger groups, from Central America to the North are also threatened.
If the children of a particular age, they are more victims of illegal adoptions, but are increasingly affected by child labour and Prostitution, the latter particularly in girls. Several representatives of NGOs confirm that there is no systematised data about the number of Victims in Latin America.
Babies are not a commodity
However, as the children can trade in Latin America fight? According to Pérez García, it is urgently necessary to reform the international agreement for Adoption that are obsolete in the face of a fast-growing organised crime. She doubts, however, that this theme has for the wealthy countries of this world a priority. Meredith Fabian stresses, in turn, the widespread impunity in the countries of Latin America, should finally be finished.
Pérez García has called for the adoption of a General change of mind: “We need to change the mentality that families buy babies, as if they were Pets, which you can buy according to skin color, origin, and age. In other words: We need children, parents to adopt, not Vice versa.”