Original: Spanish inter-american commission on human rights

3.Children and Adolescents

a.Violence

98. 
    The context of violence and insecurity in Honduras puts children and adolescents in a particularly vulnerable position, especially considering that children represent 48% of the country’s population.¹⁰⁴ The Commission received information from civil society that 1,031 children, adolescents, and young adults (18-23 years old) have died violently in the country between January and December 2014, representing an increase of 18 cases from 2013.¹⁰⁵ Of the 1,031 cases recorded, 864 were boys and 167 were girls. With regard to age, 283 victims were aged between 0 and 17, and 748 victims between 18 and 23 years old.¹⁰⁶ The leading cause of death was from bullet wounds (from firearms) at 78%.¹⁰⁷
    

99. 
    According to the information gathered between January and November 2014, in 81% of cases the person responsible for the deaths remains unknown. In only 11% of cases is the identity of the alleged perpetrator discovered. In the remaining 9% of cases, the deaths are linked - according to information provided by witnesses and relatives at the respective crime scenes - to confrontations with the Law Enforcement Military Police (POMP),¹⁰⁸ the National Police, members of the army, and to maras and/or gangs. The departments of Cortés and Francisco Morazán account for 86% of violent deaths nationwide.¹⁰⁹ According to the report of the Observatory of the Rights of Children and Young People in Honduras, there has been an increase in cases where bodies are found with signs of torture before execution, in sacks, plastic bags, tied with ropes or wrapped in sheets; some the victims had been strangled to death.¹¹⁰
    

100. 
     Part of the general atmosphere of violence that pervades the country is attributed to the presence of gangs or maras and their control over certain neighborhoods and areas, especially in urban populations where the problem is more acute. This context places children and adolescents in a particularly vulnerable situation; on the one hand, they are harassed and threatened by maras, or are pressured to collaborate or join them.¹¹¹ On the other hand, the State security forces tend to regard as gang members those adolescents living in areas under the influence of maras, or who match stereotypical characteristics associated with a certain physical appearance and social status, and therefore receive abusive and discriminatory treatment by State agents.¹¹²
     

101. 
     A report done in Honduras by the National Program for Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Social Reintegration provides valuable information for understanding the complexity of the mara phenomenon:
     

As with all social phenomena, the rise of maras and gangs does not have a single explanation. Various converging risk factors such as basic unmet needs, little access to education both in quantity and quality, the rupture of the community social fabric, limited or nonexistent opportunities for youth recreation or organization, the lack of work opportunities, and an inadequate system for treating young offenders have been and continue to be the breeding ground for the emergence of these groups that would come to capture the attention of society in general.¹¹³

102. 
     The same report refers to opinions expressed directly by current and former members of maras who were surveyed. The main findings are summarized as follows:
     

Children and adolescents feel attracted to maras because of factors that have to do with power, a sense of identity, relationships between individuals connected by close ties of solidarity and group feelings, social recognition, respect, admiration, and access to goods and money, as well as because this is supposedly an easy, fast way to be able to support themselves and to have the necessary means to do so.¹¹⁴

103. 
     The State, in its response to the draft of this report, indicated that according to information provided by CONADEH, “children and adolescents are often forced to become part of a mara or gang because their lives and integrity have been threatened and if they do not join, they will be killed, taking into consideration that the majority of the children and adolescents most affected are those who live in communities and settlements that are controlled by these criminal organizations.” The State further indicated that street children and adolescents are victims of maras and gangs and are often used by them to commit crimes. “These gangs control whole neighborhoods and in some cases their leaders are clearly identifiable.”¹¹⁵
     

104. 
     The Commission received alarming information about sexual abuse against children in general.¹¹⁶ According to Casa Alianza figures, cases of sexual abuse of children and adolescents has increased by 200%, according to statistics kept by the authorities of the Public Prosecutor for Children and organizations dedicated to providing assistance to child victims of such crimes.¹¹⁷ On average, 35 children and adolescents become victims of sexual violence every month and the most common crimes are sexual rape, “special rape” and lewd and lascivious conduct.¹¹⁸ Most of these crimes occur in the home environment.¹¹⁹ Similarly, while children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to recruitment by gangs or suffer various forms of physical violence, young and teenage girls are additionally particularly vulnerable in this context to sexual and gender violence.¹²⁰
     

105. 
     The Commission has already stated its concern in addressing the situation of children and adolescents linked to maras or violent gangs only from the perspective of public security, security forces and the criminal justice system, with the consequence of stigmatization and disregard for the structural causes underlying the current situation in Honduras.¹²¹ In that sense it is necessary to emphasize the children and adolescents’ lack of protection and vulnerability. This does not exclude the fact that, when children and adolescents commit acts contrary to criminal law, measures can be taken, consistent with international human rights standards, to hold them responsible for their actions, to the extent appropriate and that these meet the objective of rehabilitation and social reintegration.
     

106. 
     Honduras must adopt all necessary and adequate measures, especially at the local level to prevent and confront the structural causes of violence, that is, measures of a legal, political, administrative, social and cultural nature, including the creation and/or adaptation of the necessary institutions to promote the prevention of violence against children. Similarly, according to the Commission, among the measures aimed at guaranteeing children the right to a life free from violence, it is essential that Honduras encourage the modification of structural and institutional conditions as well as social norms and cultural patterns which serve to legitimize and reproduce these forms of violence against children and adolescents, and to ensure the effective implementation of existing laws on the subject. The Commission also encourages the State to establish a system for the promotion and protection of the rights of children and adolescents in the three levels of government, to carry out and coordinate public policies geared toward this sector.
     

b.Impunity

107. 
     The Commission was informed by civil society organizations that even though there are judges designated to handle children’s issues, these public officials are not specialized in children’s rights. Likewise, the IACHR received information indicating that there are not enough public defenders to handle the various proceedings related to children in Honduras. For its part, the State reported that no provisions exist concerning the eligibility of judges specialized in this area, and that there is still work to be done to guarantee that children and adolescents in Honduras have specialized public representation. Based on the information it obtained, the Commission urges the Honduran State to strengthen its capacity to protect and defend the rights of children and adolescents, and especially to have judges, prosecutors, and public defenders who are specialized in this field, so as to remove one of the obstacles that stand in the way of effective access to justice for children and adolescents.
     

108. 
     Children and adolescents are one of the groups most severely affected by conditions of insecurity, violence, and crime in Honduras. In contexts where criminal groups and gangs are present, together with a limited official presence, children and adolescents are often pressured, threatened, or deceived into collaborating with criminal organizations;¹²² drug use and addiction, for example, is one of the strategies used by traffickers to recruit new children and adolescents for small-scale dealing.¹²³ Once inside those structures, they are abused and deployed in a wide range of actions related to maintaining the groups’ interests and, since they are considered disposable and replaceable, they are generally assigned activities that pose great risks to their physical integrity or the risk of being arrested by the police. One of the consequences associated with these contexts of insecurity is the pronounced increase in the number of unaccompanied migrant children and of migrant families with children. The rise in those figures is a sign of the worrying security situation that currently prevails: many of these children and their families leave Honduras, driven by the situation of violence, by threats, and by their fear of gangs and organized crime, in conjunction with other causes related to the lack of opportunities in their country of origin or to the desire to reunite with their families in their destination countries.
     

109. 
     Chapter 7 of this report addresses in more depth the situation of children and adolescents deprived of liberty.