Living in Peru : your everyday companion

Living in Peru
Israel J. Ruiz

Of the 594 people that have been reported missing in Peru in 2008, 258 (43 percent) of them are minors, reported Acción por los Niños, a Peruvian NGO.

Furthermore, the NGO confirmed that the number of children and adolescents missing in 2008 was three percent higher than the total number of minors missing in 2007.

More attention was brought to this problem and these figures were revealed after Sandra Carvajal Herrera, a six-year-old girl from the province of Chincha disappeared and was recently found murdered.

Figures show that the majority of minors missing in Peru in 2008 (153) are between the ages of 15 and 17. Seventy-five of them are between 12 and 14 and twenty of them are between the ages of 11 and 9.

Of the 258 minors that have been reported missing this year, only five have been found. Four of them were between the ages of 15 and 17 while one was from 12 - 14 years old.

Acción por los Niños stated that no child under the age of 11 has been found this year and assured that this called for government policies that protected Peru's youth.

A suggestion made by the NGO was for the government to establish safe places where parents could leave their children while they went to work.

The NGO also reminded police that they no longer had to wait 24 hours to look for a child that has been reported missing.

Thirty percent of the children reported missing in 2007 were found.