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Honduras has rescued 12 victims of child exploitation and forced begging in 2024
Tegucigalpa, June 4 (EFE).- Honduras has rescued 12 victims of child exploitation and forced begging so far this year, a scourge that adds to the violence that affects children and youth, the fight against which requires more commitment and strengthen reporting and prevention, official sources stated this Tuesday. At the inauguration in Tegucigalpa of a workshop on the protection of the rights of children who are victims of aggression and the fight against forced child labor, the executive director of the Interinstitutional Commission Against Sexual, Commercial Exploitation and Human Trafficking of Honduras (Cicesct), Sua Martínez told EFE that her country has released “twelve minors for human trafficking in conditions of child exploitation and forced begging.” She defended prevention as a formula to guarantee and protect the rights of children and youth against child exploitation and violence. “Prevention is necessary” and parents must be “educated” about the importance of not exposing children to child labor and that they recognize that they have the right to live a dignified life, a roof over their heads and education, Martínez stressed. She added that 90% of child abuse occurs by fathers, mothers or primary caregivers, who are also responsible for many cases of sexual abuse. Parents “cannot continue violating the dignity of minors, exposing them to begging, to forced child labor, because children have rights,” the official emphasized. She urged the population to “listen to the voices of minors (…), everything that a NNA (Boy, Girl and Adolescent) can say to prevent these crimes is an early warning.” Address complaints about attacks At the workshop, inaugurated by the presidential appointee (vice president), Doris Gutiérrez, Ciciest and the Secretariat of Children, Adolescents and Families of Honduras (Senaf) signed a cooperation agreement to protect children and youth. The Senaf minister, Lizeth Coello, told EFE that it is necessary to address complaints in an articulated manner about attacks against minors and forced labor to guarantee the protection of their rights. Coello called on families and the population to “protect boys and girls and assume the responsibility that we have as a society to protect them from violations.” “Unfortunately, the context is not necessarily favorable to ensure the protection of boys and girls, in the sense that we come from a dictatorship, a criminal structure that forgot the entire population, but especially the situation of boys and girls. , to the point that today we have more than 3,000 boys and girls returned to our country,” Coello emphasized. The official highlighted that the Honduran Government promotes programs aimed at preventing violence against children and regretted that in many cases the attacks occur within their own families. “The violence and the situations that we are experiencing are affecting children and not only with the deaths, there is also a very important element of reflection and it is the orphanhood in which thousands of boys and girls are left when their fathers are murdered, their mothers or even an orphanhood that is not due to death, but is due to migration,” Coello emphasized. According to figures from the Network of Institutions for the Rights of Children (Coiproden), around 42 people under the age of 30, many of them children, were murdered in Honduras in the first four months of 2024. (c) Agencia EFE
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