VENEZUELA: More Young Lives Cut Short by Violence

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Jul 21 2005 (IPS) - Eight-year-old Roger Guzmán had just stepped out for a moment onto the balcony of his 14th floor apartment in a crowded Caracas neighbourhood when he was struck dead by a bullet to the forehead, an innocent victim in a shootout between the police and a gang of criminals.

The same day in June that Roger lost his life, a 16-year-old boy in another part of Caracas was killed by a stray bullet from the gun of an off-duty police officer who had opened fire on a person with whom he was arguing.

These are not isolated cases. At least 11 of every 100 victims of homicide in Venezuela are children or adolescents, according to a report given to IPS by the Central University Centre for Peace and Human Rights.

There were 9,800 homicides reported last year in this South American nation of 25 million, and 1,110 of the victims were under 18 years of age.

While this figure is alarming in itself, it also indicates an increase in recent years. In 2002, the number of child and adolescent victims of homicide was 687, which represented 7.1 percent of the total number of murders that year, said sociologist Josbelk González, who headed up the study.

Of the total, 78 percent of the victims were male. Most victims of homicide in Venezuela are young men between 15 and 29 years of age, González told IPS.

According to the local human rights group PROVEA, the homicide rate in Venezuela in 2003 was 59 per 100,000 inhabitants, which is more than double the average in Latin America as a whole.

By studying police statistics on 13 other types of crime, the researchers found that minors under the age of 18 were the victims in 49 percent of cases of rape, 100 percent of cases of incest, 59 percent of cases of sexual abuse, 74 percent of kidnappings, and 8.7 percent of wounds inflicted through violence.

"A study like this suffers from limitations, because a lot of the statistics are not up to date, or they differ among various official agencies," noted González.

"Above all, the statistics fall short of the true numbers because many crimes are not reported, and there are some crimes that are rarely exposed," she added.

Child abuse is a crime that is especially prone to remaining hidden. Some cases do achieve notoriety, like that of Neinilian Rojas, a prison guard who was tried and sentenced for repeatedly burning her four-year-old daughter with a hot fork, as punishment for bed-wetting.

González stressed that children and adolescents "are victims of domestic violence not only because they suffer it directly, but because they witness it on a daily basis."

In an interview with IPS, Oscar Misle of the children’s rights organisation CECODAP remarked that "sadly, the problem of violence against children persists in every country in the world."

In countries like Venezuela, "global figures, like those for homicide, for example, hide an even greater violation of rights, which would be clear if the figures were desegregated by age," he added.

CECODAP believes that "the lack of a state policy for the protection of the rights of children and adolescents is the main reason why those rights continue to be violated, and any programmes that are designed and carried out do not form part of a larger global policy," said Misle.

"We did not find any systematic programmes targeted at the violence suffered by children and adolescents that move beyond discussion groups and workshops," noted González.

The tragedy of violence is "like a monster with a thousand heads, but I think the problem in Venezuela, more than economic or social, is a cultural one, because of a breakdown in the norms of coexistence," youth activist Harry López commented to IPS.

A recent public secondary school graduate, López, 17, is one of the representatives for Latin America and the Caribbean in the group of child and adolescent experts consulted by United Nations agencies in Geneva for a global study on violence around the world.

"I think that if the problem of violence cannot be solved, we can at least work at dismantling it through programmes in the schools to promote coexistence, because we can’t coexist in society if we are killing each other," said López.

The young activist is not speaking figuratively. Lucila Zambrana, a public secondary school teacher in southwest Caracas, told IPS that in the neighbourhood were she works "it is common to see kids sneaking out the back doors, because there are other kids waiting at the front doors to settle a score with them."

"There is a crisis in the traditional spaces for socialisation, like the home, the school, the church and political parties," said Luis Díaz, also from the Centre for Peace and Human Rights.

"Violence has grown as a result of inequality and the lack of democratic spaces. And without these, how can we have democratic citizens?" he asked.