Toybox - let the Street Children live!

Street children in Guatemala

The Committee on the Rights of the Child, in its 2001 report on implementation of Convention on the Rights of the Child in Guatemala, estimated that there were around 3250 children living on the streets of the country’s cities, and a further 2474 living in private and public institutions

Many children in Guatemala have been orphaned by civil war and violence.
Children are also abandoned by parents too poor to cope.
Some are runaways from physical or sexual abuse within the family.

On the streets...

Children soon fall prey to violence, exploitation and disease.

They are rejected by society and known as 'disposable'.

They become victims of harrassment and violent abuse. Some are shot by police.
Many children seek to numb the pain and loneliness by turning to solvent abuse.

At high risk...

408 children were killed in the first 10 months of 2002 alone.
this is a 27% increase from 2001.
some were killed in gangs, others by security forces, and others in drive-by shootings.
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 in April the following year all the perpetrators were still at large.

Image of a Street Child