Girls Flee Predatory Gangs in Central America Where 'It's a Crime to be Young and Pretty' Nina Lakhani - The Guardian
go to original November 23, 2016

A grandmother and grandson walk by the Barrio18’s insignia in the Ilopango district of San Salvador, El Salvador (Giles Clarke/Getty Images)

Increasing numbers of women and girls are fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras amid mounting evidence that criminal gangs are systematically targeting adolescent girls as sexual slaves.

More than 20 years after peace deals were signed to end vicious conflicts between the region’s leftwing guerrillas and US-backed dictatorships, the three countries of the so-called Northern Triangle are still struggling with the consequences of war.

Corrupt security forces, international drug cartels and warring street gangs have helped turn the Northern Triangle into the world’s most dangerous region outside an official war zone. And the threat of sexual violence against women and girls has become a growing factor behind the refugee crisis that is quietly unfolding on America’s doorstep.

Of the 32,142 female migrants detained by Mexican immigration agents in the first nine months of this year, almost one in three were under 18. Almost 15,000 12- to 17-year-old girls from Central America’s northern triangle – Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras – have been apprehended here since 2014.

Forcing women and girls into sexual activities with gang members is prima facie evidence of modern slavery, according to Urmila Bhoola, the UN’s special rapporteur for contemporary slavery.

Read the rest at The Guardian

Related: Fracking, Mining, Murder: The Killer Agenda Driving Migration in Mexico and Central America (The Huffington Post)

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