Tragedy At A Children’s Home In Guatemala – A Fire Draws Attention To A Broken Childcare System

At a youth shelter in Guatemala, a history of abuse and corruption ended in an unthinkable disaster. After several girls tried to escape the Hogar Seguro (Safe Home) Virgen de la Asunción, police officials rounded them up and locked them in a schoolroom, where a fire later resulted in the death of 40 teenagers on March 8, 2017. 

The incident led to protests and widespread criticism of the government and President Jimmy Morales' handling of the crisis – he appointed cronies to key jobs in the Secretariat of Social Welfare and slashed its funding. In his piece, The New Yorker's Francisco Goldman reconstructs the testimonies of several of the victims and offers a glimpse into a history of negligence and abuse at the heart of a broken social services system. It is a dire history of the many kinds of violence children face in the Central American country.

Calls for reform: long overdue

With a budget of just $2.5 million to pay for state-run facilities and monitor several privately-run homes, the child protection agency is fairly limited in its capacity to guarantee a safe environment for the youth. But according to a report by Disability Rights International (DRI), "Guatemala’s social care system is entirely built on segregated residential programs that lead to long-term and unnecessary detention of children." This could change. 

Indeed, to reform the entire system, it's important for society to demand institutional change. "There is every reason to believe that the same violence, rape and sex trafficking to which children were subjected at Hogar Seguro is widespread throughout Guatemala’s orphanage and institutional care system," DRI emphasizes. Despite the tragedy, however, the worry is that the indignation may not yet be enough to guarantee change.