Brazil: Venezuelan Children Fleeing Alone | WPN World People News

Brazilian authorities are failing to provide adequate protection for hundreds of unaccompanied Venezuelan children who are fleeing into Brazil, Human Rights Watch said on Dec 05, 2019.

From May 1 through November 21, 2019, 529 unaccompanied Venezuelan children crossed the border into the Brazilian state of Roraima, according to the Brazilian Federal Public Defender’s Office, which interviewed these children at the border. Almost 90 percent of them are between ages 13 and 17. They had either traveled alone or with an adult who is not a relative or legal guardian. The total number is most likely higher, as some children may not stop at the border post where the public defenders conduct their interviews. No system exists to track and support unaccompanied children after their entry interview.

“The humanitarian emergency is driving children to flee Venezuela alone, many looking for food or health care,” said César Muñoz, senior Brazil researcher at Human Rights Watch. “While Brazilian authorities are making a great effort to accommodate hundreds of Venezuelans crossing daily into Brazil, they are failing to give these children the protection they desperately need.”

Some unaccompanied children end up living on the streets, where they may be particularly vulnerable to abuse or to recruitment by Brazilian criminal gangs, Human Rights Watch found. Without a legal guardian, they cannot enroll in school or get public health care, federal public defenders and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) told Human Rights Watch. Roraima’s child protection services, known as guardianship councils, used to place some unaccompanied children in state shelters, which can house up to 15 adolescent boys and 13 girls. In those cases, the shelter director acts as their guardian so they can go to school and obtain identification papers to access the public health system.

However, Roraima’s two government shelters for children ages 12 to 17 became so overcrowded that, on September 13, a state judge ordered them to stop accepting children.

Since then, the guardianship councils in Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima, and Pacaraima, a border town, have sought judicial authorization to place some unaccompanied Venezuelan children in United Nations shelters for Venezuelan adults and families with children. The shelters were established as part of “Operation Welcome” (Operação Acolhida), an effort by the Brazilian federal government – supported by UN agencies and non-governmental organizations – to respond to the inflow of Venezuelans. But United Nations representatives told Human Rights Watch that the shelters lack the necessary services and support for unaccompanied children.

An administrator at a shelter that houses some of them said in October that the unaccompanied children there did not go to school because there was no adult to assume responsibility for taking them there and back.

On October 8, 2019, Jesús Alisandro Sarmerón Pérez, a 16-year-old boy who lived in a UN shelter in Boa Vista, was found choked to death on a nearby street. His body was left in a plastic bag with signs of torture. He had entered Brazil alone in June, stayed briefly in a state shelter, and then lived on the streets in Boa Vista. He was placed in an Operation Welcome shelter after the September 13 decision about children’s shelters, a UNICEF Emergency Child Protection Officer told Human Rights Watch. UN representatives believe that a criminal gang may have killed him. “Venezuelan adolescents are easy prey for recruitment by gangs,” the officer said.

UNICEF plans to open two temporary homes for 10 unaccompanied children each during December, and fund them for the first six months, under an agreement with the state and federal governments. But for the project to be sustainable Brazilian state and federal authorities need to take over the coordination of the project after the first stage and provide financial support, Human Rights Watch said. UNICEF would also like to temporarily place unaccompanied children with Venezuelan and Brazilian families. That requires Brazilian authorities to create a foster family program in Roraima and to commit funding to ensure sustainability.

In his September 13 ruling on the overcrowded shelters, the state judge gave the state of Roraima 10 days to present a plan to house unaccompanied Venezuelan children. In response, the Roraima state government drafted a plan that includes improvements for the shelters and the opening of the two temporary homes by UNICEF. The Roraima state government did not respond to several Human Rights Watch requests to discuss the issue.

The plan requested by the judge is crucial, but the care and protection of unaccompanied Venezuelan children should not be the sole responsibility of Roraima state, and it should go beyond just accommodation, Human Rights Watch said. Brazil’s federal government should work jointly with Roraima and municipal authorities, and federal and state justice officials, to establish a properly funded system to identify, track, and support unaccompanied Venezuelan children. This should be done in collaboration with UN agencies and nongovernmental organizations working in the area. They should also ensure these children have access to school, health care, and legal documentation.

Source:Human Rights Watch