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Save The Children 2005 Article
Topic Started: Jul 2 2006, 06:46 PM (157 Views)
PorchlightSAmerica
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http://www.scslat.org/news/eng/noticias.php?_cod_174

Ecuador

Save the Children Sweden launches web site Ecuatorianos Desaparecidos (Missing Ecuadorians)





Credit: Antonio Querol

An agreement was signed on October 12th by the Government of Ecuador, represented by the Ministry of Government and Police, and Save the Children Sweden. The ceremony was held at the Comandancia de Policía (Police Command) and attended by the public prosecutor, Cecilia Armas, the police commander, General José Vinueza, and the Official Representative of Save the Children Sweden in Latin America and the Caribbean, Per Tamm.

By virtue of this agreement, Ecuador entered the system www.ecuatorianosdesaparecidos.org, which will be useful for the relatives of missing persons for various reasons. Likewise, the system allows reporting missing persons and cases of sexual, commercial or labour exploitation of persons.

The system also includes information on children living in shelters all over the country, supervised by the Instituto Nacional del Niño y la Familia – INNFA (National Institute of Children and the Family). Some of these children have not been identified or have not wanted to be identified (in particular, small and foreign children) and others have been identified, but live there because they apparently have no family ties.

In Ecuador, like in other places of the world, the disappearance of persons and its direct relation with cases of trafficking and trading of persons has the magnitude of an epidemic. Organisations helping illegal immigrants enter the USA, false promises, coercion and fear are only some of the aspects of this problem. Thousands of Ecuadorians try to find better opportunities, risking their lives and the lives of their relatives. However, only few cases of trafficking and trading are reported for fear of reprisals or for fear of being identified in the countries of destination, if they manage to arrive, commented Ana Salvadó, coordinator general of the project and Coordinator of the Save the Children Sweden Programme.

Up to now this year, the Policía Judicial (Judicial Police) and the Dirección Nacional de Policía Especializada para Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes – DINAPEN (National Bureau of Specialised Police for Children and Teenagers) has received about 2,000 reports of missing adults and children. A high percentage of these cases have been solved. However, thousands of cases have probably not been reported.

Dozens of Ecuadorian children are daily found at vessels raided by coastguard services, at airports of neighbour countries or at the borders of nearby and far-away countries.

The need to develop and promote a crime-reporting culture in the country has led to the launching of www.ecuatorianosdesaparecidos.org, a web site where Ecuadorians can report, freely and without fear, cases of trafficking of persons, sexual and labour exploitation or others.

Save the Children Sweden has been developing for more than one year and a half the regional project Latinoamericanos Desaparecidos (Missing Latin-Americans). This project covers 22 countries that are linked by the web site www.latinoamericanosdesaparecidos.org. All of them work using the same database system, which includes photographs of persons reported as missing: a child who went out to play and never came back, a parent in conflict with the other parent who took a child without trace or persons who never returned home after a big disaster (natural or not).

According to Ana Salvadó, in Ecuador, all this information is being edited and will allow that hundreds of children exercise their right to return to their family circles. It also means that once the system has been implemented, any Ecuadorian child who has been reported as missing with the DINAPEN or any missing adult reported as such with the Judicial Police who is now at any place in the world may be identified through the Red Latinoamericanos Desaparecidos (Network of Missing Latin-Americans).

To date, the Red Latinoamericanos Desaparecidos has more than 7,000 records of missing persons and has allowed solving more than 3,500 cases. The Network covers Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Bolivia and Chile. In all cases, the top government authorities manage and supply all the information to the system. In Ecuador, the Judicial Police, the DINAPEN and the INNFA are the bodies directly related to and responsible for the entry of data to the system.

The project Latinoamericanos Desaparecidos has made these problems visible in the countries where it has already been implemented: In Guatemala, it has detected about 6,000 irregular adoptions per year; in Costa Rica, the number of missing persons is being quantified, since there were no records allowing to determine the scope of the problem; in Peru, complex and dramatic cases of child commercial sexual exploitation have been solved, such as the one in the mine La Rinconada in Puno, on the border with Bolivia, where more than 38 girls were almost sexual slaves.

According to the US Department of State, disappearance of persons –and even more in the case of children– is directly associated to the trading and trafficking of persons, which has made this problem the main activity of organised crime in the world, above arms dealing or drug trafficking. In Ecuador, more than one thousand children disappeared between January and August 2005.

Source: Diario Expreso/Save the Children Suecia
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