The We Are News report by Cecodap in partnership with the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence shows that during 2017 more than a thousand children and adolescents were victims of homicide, mainly young people between 15 and 17 years old

1,100 children and adolescents were murdered in the country during 2017, only according to the cases that were reported in the Venezuelan national press. Three children every day. One child or adolescent every eight hours.

These violent deaths are an underreporting of what is published in the media, a part that can be quantified from news and information in the national press, in response to a State policy that hides official figures. Year after year the Somos Somos News report by Cecodap in partnership with the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence reflects the increase in the different forms of violence that are affecting minors in the country.

The study corresponding to 2017 documented 10,499 cases of violence against children and adolescents, in which structural violence (malnutrition, unhealthy or lack of medicines, children intoxicated by eating garbage,
inability to get vaccines, children with chronic diseases without treatment) affected 4,852 children, adolescent girls (NNA). But last year the violence by homicides ended the life of 1,134 children, which represents a rate of 99 children and young people killed per 100 thousand within their age group, a figure that is 10 points above the national rate that It covers the entire population that is located in 89 people killed by every 100 thousand inhabitants.

The term "confrontation" and deaths in the context of the PLO appear repeatedly in the report presented by Cecodap. The figures reveal that 105 children and adolescents were murdered under a motive associated with "resistance to authority". Each week there were three children who had not yet reached the age of 9 but were killed under this figure, another five children under the age of 14 also died in events associated with an alleged resistance or confrontation with the police and 22 minors under 17 years of age. they were victims of homicide for this same cause.

In the records of these cases, the figure of resistance to authority appears more and more frequently as "cause of death", a category that has no legal correspondence as a cause, but as explained by Roberto Briceño León, director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (OVV), has been imposed as a category that operates within a State policy: "the security bodies act as persecutors, judge and apply condemnation. This is totally arbitrary and illegal. "

The most vulnerable are adolescents between 15 and 17 years of age who become targets sought by the police to 'take them out', a term installed in the official language that masks extrajudicial executions, says Briceño León.

The report indicates that during 2017 there were 339 news reports that reported violence by officials of the different State security forces against children and in most of these cases (109) the information that occurred during police confrontations but the version of the relatives differs from what the authorities notify.

In the press releases in which the facts narrated by the relatives are collected, it is reported that some of these young people were identified and executed, often in front of their own families. In the revised and collated notes in the report, there are 56 adolescents executed by police and military officials.

Personal opinion

Between executions, malfunctioning of the judicial organs both police and state courts, precarious needs of young people are existing in the country this alarming number will continue to increase, bringing more pain to the homes of Venezuelan families.

Children who by virtue of the need they see in their homes observe as a means of salvation to go to the side of a criminal and put their lives at risk every day by snatching a telephone, shoes, a vehicle or even an armament from an official with the only vision of eating better and satisfying their needs. That while they are present in Venezuelan families the percentages of deaths of minors will continue to increase very substantially.