According to Cecodap’s own data, in the absence of official data on infanticides, between 2017 and 2019 there were 3,738 violent deaths of children and adolescents, and another 17 died in 2020 at the hands of a direct relative, while between January and July 2021, it recorded the death of 33 infants due to “domestic violence”. And in 2022, 37 femicides of girls were registered, 22 of them under five years of age, according to Cepaz
The claim that “every nine days a girl died by femicide in Venezuela in 2022”made by the Center for Justice and Peace (cepaz), reveals, according to specialists, the “profound lack of protection” of children, affected by multifactorial violence and the inexistence of public policies to prevent attacks and murders. In addition, the NGO warns that “femicidal violence against girls and adolescents in our country is on the rise.”
Infanticides, defined as the “action of killing young children,” have multiplied in Venezuela in recent years, according to specific information from State institutions, which help NGOs that monitor, which also They rely on data published by local media, since there are no official global figures in this regard.
According to Cepaz, one of the few organizations that follow this type of crime, in 2022 there were 37 femicides of girls, 22 of them under five years of age. The coordinator of the NGO Community Learning Center (cecodap), Carlos Trapani, mentions the lack of information as one of the difficulties in dealing with and preventing attacks on children, and explains that when there are no official figures, there is “institutional weakness to respond”.
“Children are suffering a profound lack of protection and one of the main conditions of lack of protection is violence,” Trapani explained to EFE.
violence without prevention
In June 2022, Osleyner, a five-year-old boy, was beaten to death by his father, a fact that was not avoided despite several alerts from concerned neighbors, who reported child abuse.
“The child was beaten to death, they killed him, (his father) beat him to death (…) He had straps, bruises on his legs, all over his body, and he (his father) said it was because the child did not want to eat anymore He didn’t want to eat anymore and he hit him,” said Rachel Díaz, Osleyner’s aunt.
Rachel assured that they never knew of the mistreatment he suffered, and that they had to leave him under his father’s care because the boy’s mother was going through an aggressive cancer from which she died a month after learning of the murder.
The murderer admitted his guilt and was sentenced in a “speedy” trial, but this did not heal the wounds of this family, which he believes could have been avoided.
Trapani assured that, although there was a recent effort by the State to deal with acts of violence against infants, the current challenge implies the “timely intervention from prevention” to reverse effects such as continuous assaults and murders.
“The family is very adrift, the school is very weak, society is trying to resolve its daily life and we have not had a focus on the child, and as long as that does not change, the contexts of violence will continue to increase,” he said. .
*Also read: Venezuela is the second country in the region with fewer measures to prevent child abuse
Blindly
The lack of figures on the number of children murdered has forced organizations like Cecodap to do their own data.
According to this NGO, between 2017 and 2019, 3,738 violent deaths of children and adolescents were registered, and another 17 died in 2020 at the hands of a direct relative, while between January and July 2021, it recorded the death of 33 children and adolescents for “ domestic violence”.
Despite these data, Trapani explained that the lack of official figures results in the scarce development of policies to attack the main sources of violence that affects children.
«We have not had a public policy understood as that logical, integrated, sustained strategy, with indicators, with objectives, with resources, with those responsible, we have never achieved that. There have always been reactions that are conjunctural, that address specific cases, but do not respond to a national strategy that allows reversing that context of violence,” he said.
He added that “the absence of programs and services” for therapeutic and psychosocial care, aimed at accompanying survivors of assaults and families to face violent events, is another weakness that concludes that “children who are victims of violence are deeply at risk drift”.
Specialized organizations warn that the responses must be structural and aim not only at caring for the victims, but also at educating about reporting, restoring confidence in the institutions and promoting a culture of prevention.
With information from EFE
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