Street Children Murders in Brazil – The Most Unimaginable Child Right Issue
Who can ever kill poor children just for the heck of it? How can any human be so inhumane to kill poor and deprived children living on the streets? This is very much a reality that one comes across in Brazil. Brazil is one of the most poverty ridden countries in the world. It is always known to be home to serious crimes and street children. But the latest demerit to Brazil’s record has been the continuous killing of these children, who start their lives on streets and continue in some prison. Brazil has been seeing continuous poverty, industrialisation and increase in the number of favelas (shanty towns). This is where more and more poverty seeps in and gets transformed into violence and crime.
This issue has been prevalent since the late nineties. But then they were actual planned incidents with children falling victim to it. But now the situation has changed, for the worse. The Brazilian judiciary system has many drawbacks. There are thousands of cases pending waiting to see daylight in the courtroom. This had caused all the more unrest. The police were getting hold of the criminals but they were not being tried. All their efforts were going in vain. This gave rise to the groups known as ‘Death Squads’ who comprise mainly of the police officers. These squads have taken up the responsibility of cleaning up the dirt form the streets of Brazil. With dirt they mean street children who are would be criminals and hence ‘killable’. These death squads are supported by many eminent social figures who also believe in the same ideology that killing these criminals in the making should be killed before they contribute to more of violence and social disturbance in Brazil.
The situation in other parts of America is not much better. Approximately 7 million children live on the streets, all across Latin America. Statistics show that more than 1-2 million children in the US are living on streets. Peru has more than 25,000 kids working on the streets. In Guatemala, the average life expectancy of a street child is not more than four years of street life. From 1990 till now, more than 9000 children have been killed by the death squads. These children throughout America have been known to being high with toxic drugs, being parts of criminal gangs, having sexually transmitted diseases, being molested by their relatives, left home because of poverty and have stopped going to school.
Organizations all across the globe are contributing to the well being of these children who deserve a better life but are being the subject to the abominable ideologies against street children.
