Unprotected childhood between family abuse and a public system without resources

The presence of children asking for money on the streets of Caracas and other cities in the country, the murder in Miranda state of a boy who had been recruited by a criminal gang, and the disappearance of another little boy in Carúpano, Sucre state, show the lack of protection facing Venezuelan children. According to human rights and children's rights advocates Angeyeimar Gil and Carla Serrano, members of the Network for the Human Rights of Children and Adolescents (Redhnna), these events occur because the public system in charge of preventing risks has been dismantled for more than ten years and families are overwhelmed by the economic crisis. To this street-level panorama is added violence inside homes, documented by the Community Learning Center (Cecodap) and its Legal Assistance Service (SAJ) in their most recent management report, titled Somos Noticia 2025-2026: The Cost of Seeking Protection. The organization warned during the presentation of the results that between 2025 and 2026 both reports of aggression against children and adolescents increased, as did the failures of State institutions to protect victims. **Protection Councils without staff or programs** Angeyeimar Gil, a social worker and former protection counselor, explained that the reappearance of children in street situations demonstrates the State's failure in its obligation to protect them and reflects structural violence marked by the lack of support for families and the weakness of schools to function as safe spaces. Regarding the case of the boy who disappeared in Carúpano, she noted that it responds to acts of social violence, but it raises an alarm about the deterioration of the community, which —together with the State and the family— is one of the three actors that, by mandate of the Organic Law for the Protection of Children and Adolescents (Lopnna), share the responsibility of caring for children. A 7-month-old baby went missing in Carúpano, the parents say he disappeared in the middle of the night and people are searching for him in the sea. 😵‍💫 pic.twitter.com/iW4auLX6TM— F á t i m a 🇻🇪✨ (@Fatimiichi) November 9, 2026 According to Venezuelan legislation, the municipal offices empowered by law to issue immediate protection measures when a minor suffers abuse, abandonment, or is in danger are the Protection Councils for Children and Adolescents (Cpnna). However, Gil warned that this system has accumulated more than a decade of lack of budget, disorganization, and loss of professionals, a problem that worsened with the complex humanitarian emergency, recent political crises, and the earthquake that occurred in June 2026, affecting most strongly the regions of the country's interior where public investment is lower than in Caracas. "We know of Protection Councils that have neither staff nor materials, and we know of the absence of programs for child protection, without which the work of the Councils is of little use. Without these elements we do not have a protection system and the personal integrity and development of children are completely at risk," Gil declared to Efecto Cocuyo. The social worker detailed that for a Protection Council to execute a measure, it needs public programs for shelter, food, health, and family guidance to exist, which today do not operate. According to Gil, since 2019 civil society organizations and international humanitarian aid resources have prevented an even more serious situation in the country, but she clarified that this assistance operates under an emergency logic to save lives in the short term and stops when the money runs out or when geopolitical decisions, such as those made by Donald Trump's government regarding the region, cut funds destined for Venezuela. "Since the country lacks a national public policy for child protection that must include the prevention of violence, food assistance, intrafamily dynamics, and investment in education, there is no investment in prevention. What is addressed is the rights violation that has already occurred," said the specialist. **Overwhelmed families, violence at home, and criminal gangs** For Gil, this lack of state prevention and the drop in the purchasing power of wages in the country push children into being left unprotected against the street or crime. The former counselor pointed out that both parents and teachers are forced to work in two or three jobs to cover the minimum needed to survive, which reduces supervision at home and the protective capacity of the school, while in recent years the Child and Adolescent Advocacy Offices (Defensorías) have also diminished; these are community services created to guide families and detect alerts of violence in communities before they reach extremes. The deterioration of coexistence within homes that Gil describes coincides with the records of Cecodap's 2025-2026 report. While in 2025 school bullying led the complaints received by that organization with 48 cases, followed by physical and emotional abuse, 45, and sexual abuse, 29, during the first nine months of 2026 intrafamily abuse moved into first place with 49 reports, surpassing sexual abuse, 27, and school bullying, 17. The Cecodap document details that mothers and fathers represent 37.36% of the identified aggressors, above classmates (27.59%) and educational staff (5.75%). When grandparents, uncles, and cousins are added, more than 40% of the aggressions occur in the home itself, which hinders timely reporting because the victim is forced to live every day in the same space as their aggressor. The study specifies that 49.19% of the victims were girls and adolescents between 12 and 17 years old, affected mainly by sexual abuse, gender violence, and internet sexual harassment, while among boys, six out of ten cases corresponded to children aged 6 to 11 subjected to abuse at home and school bullying. For Gil, when the family fails to sustain care or becomes a space of aggression and the State also fails to intervene in time, minors are left exposed to being recruited by criminal groups, as happened with the boy murdered in Miranda state. "When gangs have access to children and adolescents, the community networks, the school, and the family have failed —networks that depend on an institutional response existing to strengthen them and accompany them in education and child-rearing. If children fall into the hands of gangs, we have truly all failed them," expressed the specialist. The murder of Maikel Hurtado, 10 years old, cannot be analyzed solely as a police matter. Official information indicates that he was recruited by a criminal organization, used as a "lookout" (garitero), and murdered when he decided to leave. Maikel was a child. Before being… https://t.co/ZnL0uEypW0— Carlos Trapani (@carlosmtrapani) October 22, 2026 **Mayor's offices that ignore the law and responses driven by the media** When evaluating the performance of national authorities in response to complaints, Gil pointed out that the absence of a preventive public policy depends on a ministry that is in the hands of a person from the military sphere, while the Autonomous Institute National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents (Idenna), which is the governing body of the national Executive in charge of coordinating and supervising child policies throughout the country, fulfills an administrative role and its new leadership is concentrated on internally reorganizing the little it found upon taking office. "Often the responses of institutions are due to how famous the situation is or its impact on the media, and that is not the role they should fulfill because attention must be adequate for all cases. In the interior, the gap between needs and the institutional response is wider than in the capital," Gil affirmed. At the local level, the Lopnna obliges mayor's offices to finance the Protection Councils of their municipality. Carla Serrano, adjunct secretary of Redhnna and researcher, explained to this media outlet that municipal governments should have social protection directorates capable of gathering data and diagnosing which rights are most threatened in early childhood and adolescence in their territory, but she warned that many mayors limit their campaigns and management to asphalt, police forces, and weapons. "If we line up the mayors and ask them what it means for children to be rights-holders, many will have no idea. That is why they belittle and underestimate the work of protection counselors and do not do their best to pay them a good salary, retain them, or train them," Serrano questioned. **Grandmothers in charge of child-rearing and court delays** Child vulnerability is also marked by the fracture of families due to forced migration and separations. The records of the Cecodap report reflect that in 103 of the 302 cases attended, at least one parent was absent, with 44.66% paternal absence, 30.10% maternal absence, and 25.24% where neither parent was present. The Cecodap study points out that the burden of care and the demand for rights falls on women, since mothers, grandmothers, and caregivers represented 62% of the adults attended in 2025 and 61% in 2026. Likewise, in 2026 legal consultations about family placement doubled, because the grandmothers and aunts left in charge of the children run into obstacles to formalizing legal representation, enrolling them in school, or authorizing medical care. Asked how to resolve this legal gap, Carla Serrano explained that the Lopnna already establishes the mechanism of family placement, which is the authorization granted by a judge of a Court for the Protection of Children and Adolescents for a relative or a third party to temporarily assume the custody and representation of a minor when their parents are absent, under State supervision to verify that the caregiver fulfills their protective duty. "The solution should not be to skip the procedure, but to push the country so that family placements do not take many, many years within the courts. In states as extensive as Apure, Guárico, or Bolívar there are few protection courts and it is not easy for people from the most remote places to travel there to carry out the procedure," Serrano warned. To expedite these procedures without eliminating judicial supervision, Serrano proposed that civil organizations and international bodies present in the country, such as the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), provide technical support to the staff of the protection courts. **Closure of NGOs and the proposal for a National Agreement** Both Gil and Serrano emphasized that the work of non-governmental organizations cannot substitute for the responsibility that the Lopnna and the Convention on the Rights of the Child assign to the Venezuelan State. Gil specified that the capacity of NGOs is limited and is affected by laws or draft laws that restrict their functioning, in addition to the fact that in the areas farthest from the cities, failures in public services, lack of transportation, and the presence of organized crime groups prevent organizations from establishing themselves to work. Serrano added that persecution, harassment, and the closure of public space in Venezuela have forced independent civil organizations to apply survival strategies amid a minimal margin of maneuver. "The number of organizations that in recent years have had to close their doors and stop working is considerable, although out of caution and because of the law of silence, no one keeps a clear census of it. We must keep pressing for the repeal of those laws that are affecting civic space, so that the State, the autonomous organizations of civil society, families, and communities can all fulfill our role," noted the adjunct secretary of Redhnna. To reverse the exclusion of children from public budgets and from the speeches of political actors that both experts denounced, Serrano proposed building a National Agreement for the Rights of Children, conceived as a mandatory State policy that transcends the government in power. The specialist recalled that in the nineties, during Carlos Andrés Pérez's second government, a pact for children was promoted in Venezuela that fed the social movement with which the Lopnna was later enacted, similar to the pacts for children that countries such as Chile, Ecuador, and Mexico at one point proposed from the State or through citizen pressure on candidates during campaigns. "The first thing is to bring to the table representatives of all parties, ministries, parliamentarians, and members of civil society to establish those minimum points of agreement, allocate resources to them, reform laws if necessary, and create a monitoring plan. A mandatory point would have to be mental health in alliance with Idenna and the Ministries of Health and Education, because children and their families have had to face very difficult situations and it cannot continue to be the case that only those with private resources to pay for it receive these services," Serrano expounded.