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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMurdered with Impunity; the Street Children of Central and South America.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/may/29/duncancampbellSelvyn says he is 14 but he looks about eight. His feet are bare, his clothes torn and his eyes heavy with the effects of sniffing a powerful glue. His home is nearby, beneath the stars and beside a municipal rubbish dump. His neighbours are other street children - equally feral and ragged and loaded - and the hovering vultures which compete with them for scraps of food on the dump.
They are among thousands of street children in Tegucigalpa and thousands more in Guatemala City and in San Salvador whose chances of making it out of their teens alive sometimes seem as slim as their malnourished frames.
Local children's organisations claim that hundreds of children and young people have already been killed with gunshots to the back of the head in summary executions that almost always go undetected and unpunished.
The killings are reaching epidemic proportions in parts of Central America. In April alone, in Honduras, there were 72 such deaths, last year 549 and a total of 1,817 since 1998, according to the organisation that works with street children, Casa Alianza.
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At this time, there is greater Reverse Immigration for Mexican nationals, going to Mexico, due to federal immigration law.
JEB
(4,748 posts)polly7
(20,582 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)of a civilized, decent species.
I have watched documentaries about this. It is heart-breaking. And beyond belief that there isn't something that could be done about it.
The few people who have worked tirelessly to try to help I have so much respect for. They are angels.
I met one of them about two years ago in Ca. She truly IS an angel, she gave up what could have been a life of comfort as a professional to try to do something for children no one cared about. I asked her how they respond to the help she has been able to provide for them. She said that some cannot adjust to a normal life and return to the streets where they are used as prostitutes and abused. But others have succeeded and attended school and even college. So while her heart breaks for the ones who are too far gone to help, she keeps her focus on the successes.
She was sweet and kind and very shy but I have never met a stronger woman.