Slave-Like Exploitation and Abuse of Central American Children

SAN JOSE, 25 August 2004 - As the world celebrated the UN designated International Day to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (23 August), hundreds - if not thousands - of Central America's young girls are holed up in some of the bleakest brothels in the Americas.

Victims of economic violence and the desperation to find work, the young teenage minors are offered supposedly respectable jobs in adjoining countries only to be duped into a life of slavery in a brothel. Hundreds of under age girls from Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala have all been found in brothels throughout Guatemala after a nine-month investigation by Casa Alianza into 264 such establishments throughout the country.

In Panama, UNESCO and UNICEF in a 3-day conference from August 23rd-25th, sought to raise public awareness about slavery and its impact on the current society. It is estimated that upwards of 700,000 people a year are victims of trafficking - a modern form of slavery - in the world today. Victims of the slave trade are crammed onto buses or bundled into the trunk of a car. The beating and raping of the slaves has not changed over the past 400 years.

This week, thanks to the UN General Assembly's designation of this period of commemoration of slavery, people from around the world have repeated, "slavery is against human dignity". Yet, just in Central America, there are more than 170,000 child domestic "workers". These young girls, many of whom are exploited, being forced to work more than 12 or 14 hours each day, are excluded from their right to an education or to play or even be with their families. Given to rich families who often forget their promise to send the girls to school, the children wash floors, prepare food and take care of every whim of their owners. There are also child sugar cane cutters in El Salvador; children who make fireworks for other children to play with in Guatemala and the deep sea diver children on the coast of Nicaragua.