Guatemala City/Prensa Latina
At least 4,950 children have been forced to disappear in Guatemala, 11 percent of the total number of victims of this crime, an official source confirmed here today.
The Mental Hygiene League and others have more than two thousand files containing data on minors from families who are looking for them, said the executive director of the Presidential Commission for Peace and Human Rights (Copadeh), Oswaldo Samayoa.
At the commemorative event for the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, the official added that there are currently active organizations in different countries dedicated to locating children adopted in the context of the armed conflict.
The president of the nation, Bernardo Arévalo, recalled that small survivors of the massacres were directly kidnapped or executed, some died of hunger and injuries during forced displacement.
They forced others to fight and, more than 40 years later, families are still searching for their sons and daughters, the president described at the National Palace of Culture (seat of government).
The investigation into the missing children was supported by human rights organizations that contributed to providing comprehensive care to the victims, the head of state acknowledged.
He highlighted the location of nearly a thousand, while stressing that the families present are witnessing an ongoing drama until the fate of these people is known.
The Commission for Historical Clarification recommended the creation of a national entity to search for missing children, explained the 65-year-old politician.
Unfortunately, the first initiative was unsuccessful and families continue to search, and the State continues to do so and remains morally and ethically indebted, he stressed.
The standard-bearer of the Semilla Movement party expressed the Government’s obligation to support them and to comply with the commitments of the Peace Accords, signed in 1996.
He said he had instructed Copadeh to design and implement a search mechanism for all victims of disappearances in their different circumstances.
According to Arévalo, this is the only way to close the painful chapter for each of the families who continue to suffer the absence of their children and await their reunion.
On 21 December 2010, the United Nations General Assembly expressed concern about the increase in enforced or involuntary disappearances in various regions of the world.
The organization decided to declare August 30 as the International Day related to the victims of this phenomenon and began to commemorate it from the following year.
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