LATIN AMERICA
'The majority of children are poor and
the majority of the poor are children'
-Eduardo Galeano
. The 10th Ibero-American Summit, scheduled for Panama City November 17-18, is to
discuss the situation of children in the region . Twenty million Latin American and
Caribbean minors act as heads of families and are being exploited in various ways .
Close to half a million die every year from preventable diseases
BY GUSTAVO BECERRA
FOR every traveler, the beautiful image of Latin American geography is always and
inevitably tarnished by the sadness in the eyes of thousands of children in cities and
rural areas.
Those children are seen in large urban areas, older than their years, cleaning
windshields at stoplights, selling something or begging, with any notion of play
well-hidden in some recess of their minds, on many occasions alienated by drug and
alcohol abuse.
Precisely this problem is bringing together Ibero-American heads of state and
government on November 17 and 18 in the Panamanian capital. The central theme of this
10th summit, the situation of children and adolescents and a shared approach to the
problems affecting them, will highlight a reality that has been described by Uruguayan
writer Eduardo Galeano:
"In Latin America, the majority of children are poor and the majority of the poor are
children. Society utilizes them, punishes them and occasionally murders them,
virtually nobody listens to them and nobody understands them."
The eloquent data on that reality add up to a list that is as long as it is dreary.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reports that close to half a million of
the 192 million children living in Latin America and the Caribbean die every year from
preventable diseases.
Many of them are infected with AIDS, some at the fetal stage, but also by injecting
themselves with hallucinogens with syringes previously used by an HIV-positive person.
Others wander homeless on the streets because their parents have fallen victim to
unemployment or AIDS and no adequate heath care program exists in their countries.
Close to 20 million Latin American and Caribbean children act as heads of families at
a very early age and, as such, are exploited in various ways.
According to UNICEF, more than half of the children in the region live below the
poverty level and almost four million suffer from malnutrition.
That is compounded by a lack of safe drinking water and health services in the large
urban areas, and class, gender and racial discrimination, as well as domestic abuse.
Close to 80,000 Latin American children die every year as a result of violence in the
home, and this violence forces others to flee to a life on the streets, where their
labors affect their physical well-being. Meanwhile, they are lost to any educational
training that could help them to exercise their rights within society.
Experts who recently met in Panama for a pre-summit session acknowledged that this
situation pushes them into crime, turns them into the victims of the drug industry and
sexual abuse and, with painful frequency, drives them to suicide.
The high indices of school dropouts and repeated grades are hindering progress in the
educational sector; although 94% of the region's children are registered in school, a
quarter of those entering elementary school leave before reaching fifth grade.
The list would be incomplete without mentioning that warfare and internal conflict
have provoked child emigration, thus distancing minors from their land, family and
culture. One only has to recall the U.S.-backed counterrevolution against the
Sandinistas in Nicaragua, not to mention other examples in Guatemala, Honduras or El
Salvador. In the latter country, many young lives were cut short by bullets fired by
paramilitary groups like the death squads, or the very security forces of dictatorial
regimes maintained by Washington.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the UN have blamed governments for not
fulfilling the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by all countries in
the region, which constitutes legal and ethical guidelines for establishing social
policies, including protection and other guarantees for children.
Nor are countries implementing adequate mechanisms to accurately determine the
magnitude of the tragedy.
Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso recently proposed "improved organization in
planning and undertaking tasks that would enable young people, who will replace us
tomorrow, to improve their way of life," according to a Prensa Latina cable.
For his part, Angel Abascal, the Cuban deputy minister of education, affirmed that
political and government effort and commitment are needed to achieve universal
education, equal and free access to health services and children's rights to equality
and social justice.
For now, the 10th Ibero-American Summit should be seen as an effort to erase from 21st
century Latin American geography that look of sadness in the faces of the region's
little ones, and those hard stares toward a dreamless void.
