Children in El Salvador

Chilling Statistics

The current government of El Salvador has focused its limited resources on meeting the needs of Salvadoran children with efforts to reduce poverty and promote family stability through economic growth. While these efforts are starting to bear much-needed fruit, they fail to adequately meet the immediate needs of the so-called children of the street. Fifty percent of infants under the age of five are undernourished, and only one percent of the children living in rural areas of El Salvador< have access to adequate elementary education. [1] More than 12,000 Salvadoran children aged 0-5 die each year from polluted drinking water and gastrointestinal diseases. [2] A report of UNICEF indicated that about 1.8 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 actively participate in the Salvadoran labor market. [3] The "children of the street" have no formal education and wander in highly commercialized areas of El Salvador in search of drugs, money, and food. Unfortunately, these "wanderings" offer children the opportunity to take part in minor criminal activities. Estimates of the number of children living in the streets of El Salvador run as high as 300,000. [4]

About 50% of the children living in the street have another sibling in the same condition. According to the Salvadoran Institute for the Protection of Minors, more than 28% of these children reported being abused by authorities, with 51% of the injuries reported being beatings, and 20% cuts. Even with these injuries and threats, 78% of these children reported feeling safer on the streets than in their own homes. [5]

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) 80% of the Salvadoran children suffer from cruelty. Only 9% of children who find refuge on the streets are girls since most girls are used for domestic labor at an early age. More than 90% [6] of the girls on the streets belong to gangs, which tend to prostitute them for money. About 44% of the estimated 2,300 prostitutes in three major red light districts of San Salvador are between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. [7] In late 1996, police estimated that 60% of the under-age girls exploited in approximately 600 clandestine bars and brothels in Guatemala City are Salvadoran. [8] The children who spend their lives in the streets have lost their trust of family and community. Approximately 84% [9] of children living on the streets would like to have the opportunity to change their street-bound situation. [10]

In order to meet the immediate needs of these “children of the street”, a non-profit organization was formed to give these children hope and opportunity. "Children of the Street" (COTS) was named for those it seeks to serve.

These children of the street, many far too young to comprehend their fate, beg, steal, and sell themselves for a good meal, a hot shower, and a clean bed. Living on the edge of survival, they are often caught in an undertow of beatings, illegal detentions, torture, sexual abuse, rape, and murder. Found throughout the cities of El Salvador , these children of the street are growing in number, and they are crying out to the world for help.

Children of the Street (COTS) is a non-profit organization formed to end the suffering of innocent children in El Salvador.

A Typical Story

Ever since she was six, Maria Aguilar has survived on garbage. "I grew up in the dump," the now18-year-old Aguilar told Reuters, recalling that her mother brought her to the dump site when she was a child. She sifts through fetid waste to make a living in the dump, where many other children who work around her dine on buzzard soup (when they can catch one of the scavengers).

"The hospitals used to dump feet or legs or pieces of human flesh," she said. "Once there was a skinned dog. People just went around calling it the ham."

Aguilar is now a mother of three. Children and adult sifters compete with each other and with the buzzards for recyclable salvage such as paper, glass, or metal. At times they come across the most putrid garbage imaginable, such as human or animal remains left to rot in the tropical sun.

When the buzzards get in the way, some sifters exact revenge by turning them into soup or selling them in markets, where good ones can fetch up to $5.70 each. "They say it's good althoughI've never tried it," Aguilar said of the soup. "They say it's good for the heart. When someone sells one, it makes their day."
Another prize for the sifters is spoiled food tossed out by supermarkets and restaurants, a ready meal for the hungry. The leftovers are in such demand that many companies have hired armed guards or off-duty police to accompany their trips to the dump to ward off the flocks of sifters.

The Facts

The average age of the children working at dump sites in San Salvador is 11 years, and 32% of these children live at the dump site. Many of these working children face physical hazards. Child garbage pickers are exposed to an "extreme risk of long-term disease or disability" including extremely high blood levels of lead and mercury, battering and gunshot wounds, serious infections such as tetanus, impaired pulmonary function, and skeletal deformities from heavy lifting, skin disorders and other conditions associated with a total lack of hygiene.

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• [ 1] El Diario de Hoy (local newspaper) Report on Education
• [ 2] CIDEP, Enfoque Ambiental Institucional, 1999.
• [ 3] 1999 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State, February 25, 2000
• [ 4] Reuters, 22 April 1998, AT EL SALVADOR DUMP, BUZZARD SOUP ON MENU, by Luis Galdamez
• [ 5] ISPM Informe Final Censo de Niños, niñas y adolecentes en Situacion de calle en El Salvador, año 2001
• [ 6] ISPM Informe Final Censo de Niños, niñas y adolecentes en Situacion de calle en El Salvador, año 2001
• [ 7] (US Dept of State, Human Rights Report, 1999)
• [ 8] (ECPAT International)
• [ 9] ISPM Informe Final Censo de Niños, niñas y adolecentes en Situacion de calle en El Salvador, año 2001
• [10] ISPM Statistics 2002