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Essay on Guatemala Human Rights for Minors
Guatemalan children go through stern human rights violations, the government prepares to implement a new Minors' Code, the report strongly criticizes the country's juvenile justice system, calling it not just ineffective but punitive as well. On the street, children must contend with regular beatings, thefts, and sexual assaults by the country's National Police and security guards regulated by the Interior Ministry. The government routinely failed to investigate or prosecute such abuses, according to Human Rights Watch, including the cases of eleven street children murdered in unclear circumstances during 1996. Similarly, authorities did not guarantee that detained children could enjoy adequate treatment in custody. The report urges Guatemalan authorities to ensure that the safeguards contained in the new children's code are fully and consistently implemented. "Guatemalan street children have nowhere to turn.
Those who attack them enjoy impunity, and the legal system fails them completely," charged José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of Human Rights Watch/Americas. Guatemala is a signatory to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, the country's justice system, rather than protect minors from abuse, often exacerbates violations, the study finds. "Even innocent juveniles are treated harshly by the justice system," declared Lois Whitman, director of the Human Rights Watch Children's Rights Project. "Children can be rounded up arbitrarily and forced to spend many months being warehoused in this brutal system." (Watch World Report 1998)
These human rights were prepared keeping into contemplation the children who are arrested may spend many months in pre-adjudication detention, often because they simply have no family to claim them. When they do receive a hearing, their rights to due process, including access to representation, are frequently ignored. Children in protective custody are detained together with juvenile offenders. As a result, children who may have fled abusive homes are thrown into the same dreary facilities, as are drug addicts, pickpockets, prostitutes, and violent offenders. Young children are frequently mixed with teenagers.....
