El Salvador: Children’s rights violated during ‘state of emergency’

• El Salvador declared a state of emergency in March 2022, resulting in serious human rights violations against children in low-income communities.
• Many children are abused not only by gang members but also by security forces, which can have lifelong effects.
• Governments should end abusive practices, prioritize policies that respect human rights, dismantle criminal gangs, address child recruitment and provide protection and opportunities for children.

(San Salvador) – El SalvadorKenya’s state of emergency declared in March 2022 has led to serious human rights violations for children in low-income communities, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 107-page report‘Your children are not here’: Children’s rights violated during El Salvador’s ‘state of emergency’The report documents arbitrary detention, torture, and other forms of abuse against children during President Nayib Bukele’s “war on gangs.” Detained children often face overcrowding, lack of adequate food and health care, and are cut off from lawyers and family members. In some cases, children are held with adults in the first days after their arrest. Many are convicted on overbroad charges and unfair trials that deny due process.

“Children from vulnerable groups in El Salvador are bearing the brunt of the government’s indiscriminate security policies and are subject to serious human rights violations,” Juanita GobertesAmericas director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should end its abusive practices and prioritize effective policies that respect human rights, dismantle criminal gangs, address child recruitment, and provide protection and opportunities for children.”

Police and soldiers have conducted numerous indiscriminate raids, particularly in low-income neighborhoods plagued by gang violence, arresting more than 80,000 people, including more than 3,000 children, since the state of emergency began in March 2022. For decades, widespread poverty, social exclusion, and a lack of education and work opportunities have left children with few viable options, allowing gangs to recruit and exploit them and security forces to stigmatize and harass them.

Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 90 people in El Salvador between June 2023 and July 2024. In September and December 2023, researchers visited communities across the country, conducted interviews, and reviewed case files and medical, educational, and criminal records. Interviewees included victims of abuse, their relatives, and lawyers, as well as judges, police officers, former government officials, teachers, security experts, journalists, and Civilized Society represent.

The government’s widespread arbitrary arrest campaign resulted in the detention of many children with no apparent links to gang violence or criminal activity, often for long periods of pretrial detention. Such arrests were often based on children’s appearance and socioeconomic status rather than on evidence of a crime. In some cases, authorities relied on dubious information, such as unverified anonymous reports, to justify detention. Security forces frequently failed to produce search or arrest warrants and rarely provided detainees or their families with clear reasons for their arrests.

In May 2022, soldiers stopped a 16-year-old high school student from Senxantepec, Cabanas, as he was on his way home from a soccer game. Soldiers forced him to strip, burned his torso with a lighter, and ordered him to confess to gang ties, a relative told Human Rights Watch.

He was charged with illegal association based on testimony from an anonymous informant and sentenced to six years in prison, where he remains in poor living conditions, court files show.

The government’s crackdown overwhelmed El Salvador’s already overburdened juvenile justice system. During the state of emergency, more than 1,000 children were convicted of crimes ranging from 2 to 12 years, often on overly broad charges such as unlawful association and often based on uncorroborated police testimony. Through ill-treatment, including torture, some children were forced to confess to gang membership or otherwise provide information about alleged gang affiliations.

On July 1, 2022, police and soldiers arrested a 17-year-old student from a rural town in Sonsonate state without a warrant. On January 9, 2023, a judge pressured her and seven other children to jointly confess to collaborating with the MS-13 gang in exchange for a reduced sentence. Fearing a longer prison term, they pleaded guilty and were sentenced to a year in prison. “We had no choice,” she said. “We all wanted to see our mother.”

Authorities took little to no measures to protect detained children from violence at the hands of other detainees, including beatings and sexual violence. Dozens of children were held for weeks or months without contact with their families; many were only allowed to see their lawyers for a few minutes before hearings.

For years, juvenile detention facilities in El Salvador have been overcrowded, understaffed, unsanitary and lacking adequate infrastructure, creating dangerous and inhumane conditions that fail to prioritize the well-being and social reintegration of children.

Children and their families say they have been doubly traumatized: first by gang members abusing them and attempting to recruit them, then by security forces arbitrarily detaining and abusing them. This traumatic detention experience can have a significant impact on them throughout their lives.

El Salvador’s homicide rate was historically high, reaching a staggering 106 homicides per 100,000 people in 2015. By 2023, the homicide rate had dropped significantly to an all-time low of 2.4 per 100,000 people, according to official data. Accurately assessing the extent of the homicide reduction is made more difficult by a lack of transparency and reports of data falsification.

The government of El Salvador should establish a mechanism to review the cases of those detained during the state of emergency, Human Rights Watch said. The government should prioritize the cases of children and other vulnerable detainees, aim to release all those detained without evidence, and prosecute senior gang leaders who bear the greatest responsibility for serious crimes under due process.

The Salvadoran authorities should also take steps to develop and implement a comprehensive safety strategy to protect children from gang violence and recruitment, including through violence prevention initiatives, rehabilitation programmes for recruited children, and reintegration support for offenders. Detention should be a last resort for children, for the shortest possible time, in safe, humane and reintegration-friendly places.

Foreign governments should publicly and privately express their concerns about the human rights situation in El Salvador, including at the United Nations Human Rights Council. Foreign governments and international financial institutions, particularly the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (Banco Centroamericano de Integración Económica, BCIE), should suspend and stop approving loans to Salvadoran institutions directly involved in abuses, including the National Civil Police, the armed forces, the prison system, and the Attorney General’s Office.

“The government’s harsh attack on children risks perpetuating the cycle of violence in El Salvador,” Gobertus said. “Foreign governments should urge the Salvadoran government to stop its human rights violations and protect the lives and futures of children.”