A Chance to “Speak About What’s Not Talked About”: Challenges for Making Indigenous Childhoods from Invisible to Invincible

By Iliana Curiel Arismendy
Special for Diario del Norte

Indigenous children have the right to life and to live healthily, within a family.

Commemoration of National Indigenous Childhood and Adolescence Day

To address the major challenges faced by indigenous children in La Guajira, it is crucial to mention that today we commemorate Colombian Indigenous Childhood Day, as established by Law 2132 of August 4, 2021.

Poverty is more pronounced among indigenous children in Latin America due to a long history of discrimination and exclusion. Consequently, poverty levels in the region, measured by the deprivation of basic rights, reach 88% among indigenous children under 18 years old, compared to 63% for the general population of the same age group.

This represents a violation of children’s rights to survival and development, with significant societal costs in terms of productive capacity and social inclusion. According to CEPAL and UNICEF, data also shows a pattern of inequality harming indigenous children, who face severe deprivation in access to education, clean water, and housing, significantly worse than other children. Notably, in Andean community countries, five out of ten indigenous children under five years old suffer from chronic malnutrition.

The purpose of the Law is to uphold children’s rights in four categories: existence, development, participation, and protection. Today we will discuss the right to existence, and the challenge lies in intervening in what is not known.

Indigenous communities not only have the right to existence but also the right to be informed about their wellbeing and to participate in decisions about it. Currently, there is little updated information on the Wayuu, Wiwa, or Kogui indigenous children and adolescents in La Guajira and their poverty.

In recent years, efforts have been made to define and analyze child poverty from a human rights perspective, identifying fundamental rights to guarantee the wellbeing of indigenous children. La Guajira should advance in this area. Thresholds of deprivation have been defined for measuring multidimensional poverty, considering seven dimensions currently overlooked: health, education, information, adequate nutrition, water, sanitation, and housing. These data are underanalyzed and underintervened in La Guajira.

Regarding the right to existence: Indigenous children have the right to life, to live healthily, in a family, and not to suffer hunger or malnutrition. Over the past six years, more than 5,000 Wayuu children under five years old have died (Sentence T302/2017).

According to Epidemiological Week 32, from August 7 to 13, 2022 (National Institute of Health), there have been 293 cases of late perinatal and neonatal mortality, equating to one case, one death per day throughout 2022, from week 20 of pregnancy to 28 days after birth.

In La Guajira, 15 children have died from acute diarrheal disease, 28 from acute respiratory infection, and 43 children under five years old have died from acute malnutrition in 2022. There have been 1,105 cases of acute malnutrition (still alive) reported to health institutions that need follow-up and intervention. These alarming figures, according to trends, could represent the worst mortality rates for Guajiro children in the last 10 years.

What to Do?

In various fields, it is mentioned that La Guajira is “overstudied,” but childhood and adolescence in La Guajira are not. It is necessary to analyze indigenous childhood and adolescence in La Guajira from a rights-based approach. A deep review of the right to wellbeing and good living according to the cosmogony of La Guajira’s indigenous peoples is required. Addressing hunger and malnutrition from a social inclusion, food sovereignty, and poverty perspective, where children are the center, rather than solely from a health sector perspective.

The right to existence includes the right to be born and not die due to lack of healthcare. The right to development requires a deep analysis of literacy in the indigenous population. It is scientifically proven that a literate mother or father directly impacts their children’s wellbeing. Our indigenous children suffered from educational barriers during the pandemic due to lack of internet access and sanitary measures during confinement. Today, we should analyze school attendance indicators in the three life stages: early childhood (0-5 years), childhood (6-11 years), and adolescence. Rights related to participation and citizenship.

Rights to Participation: It is necessary to analyze their competence to speak and understand both their native language, indicating their ability to participate in community life, and Spanish, which indicates their ability to participate in national life. On the other hand, rights to citizenship: One indicator is the proportion of children under one year old who have been issued a birth certificate.

Rights Related to Protection: Indigenous childhood and adolescence may be the most strongly affected population group in the country by armed conflict and its consequences, such as forced displacement, recruitment of adolescents and children, the return of indigenous families from Venezuela, the impact of mobility, and the violation of migrant Wayuu children’s rights.

To protect indigenous childhood and adolescence, it is essential to highlight the differences between the rights-based vision of childhood and the indigenous perspective on child protection concepts.

These cases involve notions of incest, sexual abuse, forced retention, and lack of support. La Guajira faces many challenges in addressing its indigenous childhood and adolescence.

I want to end by mentioning this: Even in adversity and from resilience, the systematic violation of indigenous peoples’ rights has not been able to hide that the Wayuu people have developed various adaptations in different ecological niches: drought, violence, desert, hunger, food shortages, lack of potable water, cultural syncretism, and religions.

Despite this adversity, a Wayuu child: Masters more than one language in their early years of life, possesses early autonomy compared to urban children, learns to walk and swim at early stages (9 months), rows and fishes near their homes with good skills that challenge psychomotor development theories, has a respiratory system and motor development adapted and advanced for artisanal fishing at depths. They grow in harmony with nature, with emotional balance and joy. So, what are we missing about the greatness of our indigenous childhood?