Toybox - let the Street Children live!
Street children in Guatemala
Many children in Guatemala have been orphaned by civil war and violence, abandoned by parents too poor to cope or are runaways from physical or sexual abuse within the family unit. Once on the streets, children soon fall prey to violence, exploitation and disease.
Rejected by society, these children are regarded as 'disposable' and become victims of harassment and violent abuse. Some are shot.
Many of these abandoned children seek to numb the pain and loneliness of life on the streets by turning to solvent abuse.
In order to survive they are often faced with a choice of either starvation, joining a violent gang, or stealing or selling their bodies.
Street life is incredibly dangerous for children and becoming even more dangerous. For example, in the first 10 months of 2002 alone, 408 children and youth were killed; a 27 per cent increase. Some were killed by gangs, others by security forces and others (street children) by drive-by shootings. Approximately 60 per cent of the homicides of women are the result of domestic violence. Sexual abuse and incest affect 30 per cent of girls and 18 per cent of boys.
Guatemalan street children have also been killed in extrajudicial executions. In September 1996, sixteen-year-old Ronald Raúl Ramos was shot and killed by a drunken Treasury Police officer. More than ten other street children in Guatemala were murdered that year under suspicious circumstances, yet by April of the following year, all of the perpetrators were still at large.
Natural Disasters & Civil War
In 1998, Central America was devastated by Hurricane Mitch, a Category 5 hurricane. It was one of the most destructive hurricanes in the recorded history of the western hemisphere.
The drought striking Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras, is the most urgent problem to hit the area since Hurricane Mitch killed 26,000 people in 1998, the agency reported.
Then in Oct 2005, Hurricane Stan caused more devastation by killing 760 people, with reports saying the longterm damage to the infrastructure of the country was worse even than the devastation of Mitch.
More hurricanes are forecast this autumn .
Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein said that 130,000 persons were directly affected by Stan and 3.5 affected indirectly.
Civil War
Guatemala suffered more than 36 years of internal conflict, which formally ended with the signing of the Peace Accords at the end of 1996. The war had left some 150,000 people dead, most of them Indian civilians, and some 50,000 missing; a difficult rebuilding of the country lay ahead.