- El Salvador’s state of emergency, declared in March 2022, has led to severe human rights violations against children of low-income communities.
- Many children have been doubly victimized by gang members who abused them and then by security forces who detained and mistreated them, with possible lifelong consequences.
- The government should end its abusive approach and prioritize a rights-respecting policy that dismantles criminal gangs, addresses child recruitment, and provides children with protection and opportunities.
(San Salvador) – El Salvador’s state of emergency, declared in March 2022, has led to severe human rights violations against children of low-income communities, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 107-page report, “‘Your Child Does Not Exist Here’: Human Rights Abuses Against Children Under El Salvador’s ‘State of Emergency,’” documents arbitrary detention, torture, and other forms of ill-treatment against children under President Nayib Bukele’s “war on gangs.” Detained children have often faced overcrowding, lack of adequate food and health care, and have been denied access to their lawyers and family members. In some cases, children have been held, in the first days after arrest, alongside adults. Many have been convicted on overly broad charges and in unfair trials that deny due process.
“Children from vulnerable communities in El Salvador are bearing the brunt of the government's indiscriminate security policies, suffering egregious human rights violations,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should end its abusive approach and prioritize a rights-respecting and effective policy that dismantles criminal gangs, addresses child recruitment, and provides children with protection and opportunities.”
Since the state of emergency began in March 2022, police officers and soldiers have conducted countless indiscriminate raids, particularly in low-income neighborhoods where gang violence was a constant presence, arresting over 80,000 people, including over 3,000 children. For decades, pervasive poverty, social exclusion, and lack of educational and work opportunities have left few viable paths forward for children, enabling gangs to recruit and exploit them and security forces to stigmatize and harass them.
Between June 2023 and July 2024, Human Rights Watch interviewed over 90 people in El Salvador. In September and December 2023, researchers visited neighborhoods throughout the country, conducting interviews and reviewing relevant case files, as well as 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 civil society representatives.
The government's widespread and arbitrary arrest campaign has resulted in the detention—often for prolonged periods pretrial—of numerous children who have no apparent connections to gang-related violence or criminal activities. Frequently, such arrests appear to have been motivated by a child’s physical appearance and socioeconomic status rather than by evidence of wrongdoing. In some instances, authorities have relied on dubious information, such as unverified anonymous tips, to justify detention. Security forces have routinely failed to present search or arrest warrants and have seldom provided detainees or their families with clear reasons for an arrest.
In May 2022, soldiers stopped a 16-year-old high school student from Sensuntepeque, Cabañas state, on his way home from a football match. A relative told Human Rights Watch that soldiers forced him to strip, burned his torso with a cigarette lighter, and ordered him to confess gang affiliations.
Court file documents show that he was charged with unlawful association, on the basis of testimony from an anonymous informant, and sentenced to six years in prison, where he remains in poor living conditions.
The government’s crackdown has overwhelmed El Salvador's already strained juvenile justice system. Over 1,000 children have been convicted during the state of emergency, with sentences of 2 to 12 years in prison, often on such overly broad charges as unlawful association, and frequently on the basis of uncorroborated police testimony. Through mistreatment, including torture, some children have been coerced into confessing to being part of a gang or otherwise providing information about supposed gang affiliation.
Police and soldiers arrested a 17-year-old student from a rural town in Sonsonate state on July 1, 2022, without showing her a warrant. On January 9, 2023, a judge pressured her and seven other children to jointly plead guilty to collaborating with the MS-13 gang in exchange for reduced sentences. Fearing longer sentences, they pleaded guilty and were sentenced to a year in prison. “We didn’t have an option,” she said. “We all wanted to see our mothers.”
Authorities have taken few, if any, steps to protect detained children from violence at the hands of other detainees, including beatings and sexual violence. Dozens of children have been held without contact with their families for weeks or months; many have been allowed to see their lawyer only for a few minutes before hearings.
Juvenile detention facilities in El Salvador have for years been overcrowded, understaffed, unsanitary, and lacking in adequate infrastructure, creating dangerous and dehumanizing environments that fail to prioritize children’s well-being and reintegration.
Children and their family members described being doubly victimized: first, at the hands of gang members who abused them and tried to recruit them, then by security forces who arbitrarily detained and mistreated them. Lifelong consequences of the traumatic detention experiences are likely to be significant.
El Salvador’s historically high homicide rate, which reached a staggering 106 per 100,000 people in 2015, has dramatically declined, according to official figures, to a record low of 2.4 homicides per 100,000 people in 2023. A lack of transparency and reports of data manipulation make it harder to precisely assess the extent of the reduction.
El Salvador’s government should establish a mechanism to review the cases of those detained during the state of emergency, Human Rights Watch said. It should prioritize reviewing cases of children and other vulnerable detainees, with a view to releasing all those detained without evidence and prosecuting, with respect to due process, high-level gang leaders most responsible for serious crimes.
Salvadoran authorities should also take steps to establish and implement a comprehensive security strategy that protects children from gang violence and recruitment, including through violence prevention initiatives, rehabilitation programs for recruited children, and reintegration support for those in conflict with the law. Detention should be a last resort for children, for the shortest appropriate period, in facilities that are safe, humane, and conducive to reintegration into society.
Foreign governments should publicly and privately raise concerns about the human rights situation in El Salvador, including at the United Nations Human Rights Council. Foreign governments and international financial institutions, in particular the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (Banco Centroamericano de Integración Económica, BCIE), should suspend and refrain from approving loans benefiting Salvadoran agencies 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 targeting of children risks perpetuating the cycle of violence in El Salvador,” Goebertus said. “Foreign governments should urge the Salvadoran government to end its human rights violations and protect the lives and futures of children.”
