Street Children Human Rights Plea to the United Nations

Campaigners highlight deaths of Street Children at UN

15/4/03 - By staff writers - Ekklesia

In an oral statement to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, a Christian campaign group has highlighted the habitual killing of street children in Brazil, Honduras and Guatemala.

In Salvador alone, the capital of Brazil's Bahia state, the Jubilee Campaign said that between 1991 and 2000, 1,453 children and youth were murdered.

According to the organisation many locals regard the Street Children as no more than vermin and see their deaths as a form of social cleansing.

Jubilee also highlighted the commercial sexual exploitation which many poor Brazilian children face and informed the U.N Commission that in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, there are an estimated 150,000 child prostitutes, controlled by a strong and organised mafia, working in bars, prostitution houses, massage salons and hotels.

The campaigners told the U.N Commission that in Honduras, the Children's Welfare Organisation, Casa Alianza, has documented the murders and extrajudicial executions of more than 1,600 street children and youth since 1998. Less than 5% of the murders have resulted in any conviction.

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