Meanwhile, in Guatemala, thousands of children are making their way to the United States, driven by extreme poverty, crime and the dream of family reunification.
In 2013, a child under five died every two hours of preventable causes such as diarrhea or pneumonia. Yet Guatemala is the Central American country that invests the least in children and teenagers. While Honduras, Costa Rica and Nicaragua earmark over six percent of GDP to minors, Guatemala only invests 3.1 percent. This, in a country where 48 percent of the population is made up of children and teens.
“The state is co-perpetrator of this extermination through the systems of exclusion and inequality […]. Every two days a child dies of malnutrition, while an undetermined number suffer chronic malnutrition that stunts their physical and cognitive development,” reads a report on the state of Guatemala’s children published by the Office of Human Rights of the Archbishopric of Guatemala (ODHAG).
Guatemala is the Central American country that invests the least in children and teenagers
Meanwhile, economic rights are faring no better. The bishops’ report notes that six out of 10 working minors suffer workplace exploitation, with 82 percent of boys and 75 percent of girls denied access to social security.
“The only thing our economic model does is maintain poverty levels,” notes the analyst Gustavo Berganza. “Since 2001 the economy has grown an average 3.4 percent, while demographic growth has been 2.4 percent. There isn’t even a remote possibility of reducing poverty in these conditions.”
Guatemala is not an attractive country for investors: the average worker is malnourished, unqualified and lacks a quality education. Effecting change is difficult in a country with the lowest taxes on the continent where any attempts at reform are vigorously rejected by the country’s economic powers.
Meanwhile, the homicide rate among males aged 13 to 29 grew 70 percent in one year, up from 29.9 per 100,000 inhabitants to 42.2 in 2013.
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