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25 U.C. Davis J. Int'l L. & Pol'y 37 (2018-2019)
The Torture of Children and Adolescents Living and Dying in Guatemala's Institutions

handle is hein.journals/ucdl25 and id is 43 raw text is: THE TORTURE OF CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS LIVING AND DYING IN GUATEMALA'S INSTITUTIONS Madeleine M Plasencia* ABSTRACT In this article, Professor Madeleine Plasencia examines the legal context of treatment of disabled children in Guatemala living in institutionalized environments. The article explores evidence that children confined in orphanages and other public care facilities in Guatemala endure conditions that violate the provisions against torture and other cruel or degrading treatment or punishment provided under various international instruments, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The article discusses the growing world-wide desperation from poverty and food scarcity that drives families to place their children with and without disabilities in state-supported institutions. The article argues that foreign funding and volunteer-tourism and international adoption networks contribute to the separation, institutionalization and subsequent commodification of children in an international market. Copyright © 2018 Madeleine M. Plasencia, B.A. Cornell University; J.D. University of Pennsylvania. Formerly tenured Associate Professor at the University of Tulsa, School of Law, currently Affiliated Law Professor, University of Miami School of Law. Thanks to the University of Miami School of Law Dean Patricia D. White for support funds to travel to Guatemala. Thanks are due to the work of Disability Rights International, its founder and executive director Eric Rosenthal, the authors of numerous reports including After the Fire, and Still in Harm's Way, and the attorneys who prepared the petitions for precautionary measures in these cases. The conditions existing in these (and other) institutions both in Latin America and in other parts of the world would not be known without the legal and investigative work of DRI. I am grateful to Raquel Aldana and Steven Bender for very warm invitations to contribute to this symposium. Thanks also to the timely and thorough research and reference support of Robin C. Schard, Associate Director, Law Library & Lecturer in Law at the University of Miami, School of Law, and to the editorial staff of the UC Davis Journal of International Law & Policy. To my spouse, Elizabeth M. Iglesias I am profoundly grateful for encouraging me to visit Guatemala, a place of sublime enchantment and contradiction.

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