WEEKLY SELECTION-HONDURAS: Minors Smuggled into Canada to Deal Drugs

By Thelma Mejía Reprint | | Print |

Thelma Mejia

TEGUCIGALPA, Apr 10 1999 (IPS) - Around 250 Honduran children are being used as street dealers by drug trafficking gangs in Canada, the non-governmental ‘Casa Alianza’ reported here Wednesday.

Casa Alianza, which is investigating the alleged drug and child trafficking racket, said some of the minors sent remittances home to their families.

The NGO also reported that another 70 Honduran minors are in the U.S. city of Portland, Oregon waiting to be smuggled into Canada to sell crack on the streets, organised by drug trafficking gangs.

Casa Alianza activists flew to Canada late last year, where they interviewed 80 undocumented Honduran minors, who were found to be selling drugs on the streets.

Alvaro Conde, director of Casa Alianza in Honduras, said the evidence was strong. He added that his group was working with Canadian police to track down the culprits.

The ‘Fiscalia del Menor’ (Minors Prosecutors Office) in Honduras also said it had been investigating such reports for three months.

Local police announced Wednesday that they were coordinating efforts with Canada to track the minors and find the “blind spots” over which they were smuggled across the U.S.-Canadian border and discover the groups or individuals exploiting the children.

Police in Canada have asked Honduran authorities to exercise stricter controls over departures of minors toward Canada. They added that the number of Honduran children travelling to Canada had increased in the wake of hurricane Mitch, which devastated this already impoverished Central American nation in late October.

Conde said most of the undocumented Honduran minors living in Canada were from the rural provinces of Cedros, El Porvenir, Guantillo and Guayabillo in central Honduras, where poverty and illiteracy reign.

Casa Alianza also pointed out that most of the minors involved in the racket were taken from the ranks of the roughly 10,000 children living in the streets of Honduras’ main cities. The rest are children reported as missing by their families.

The problem of street children has taken on a higher profile over the past decade in Honduras. Authorities acknowledge the difficulties in combating the complex problem, due to a lack of funds, the absence of adequate living conditions in many homes, and social marginalisation and poverty.

Most of the kids involved in the drug dealing racket are reportedly living in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, near the U.S. border. A number of them have been sending money earned on the streets to their families in Honduras, according to Casa Alianza.

Rosario Godoy, the head of the ‘Fundacion Amiga de los Niños’ (Friends of the Children Foundation), told IPS that her group had found that missing minors were not only being used to sell drugs, but were also submitted to sexual exploitation.

The Foundation estimates that an average of five children a day go missing in Honduras. Most of them are taken over the western border through Guatemala and Mexico to the United States and Canada.