Latin America Trafficking Survivors
Our newest house in Latin America is a safe house in Guatemala for young and adolescent boys who have survived trafficking, sexual violence, or irregular migration. When it opened in the spring of 2022, it was the first program in Central America to provide protection and care to boy survivors.
Our Youth Receive the Unconditional Love and Care They Need to Heal and Grow
It is our third safe house in Latin America for trafficking survivors, joining another in Guatemala and one in Honduras exclusively for girls ages 12 to 18 — sometimes the survivors we receive into our care are even younger. Here, our youth receive the unconditional love and trauma-informed care they need to heal and grow: safety, physical and mental health care, and all of our programs and services.
Our direct care services are coupled with public education and prevention programs and work at the systemic and policy levels to promote social change and reduce the incidence of trafficking and sexual violence and exploitation.
Through our public education work we have trained thousands of police, judges, lawyers, prosecutors, civil society organizations, and neighbors to recognize and identify child rights violations, especially human trafficking.
Our Goal Is Both to Impede Criminal Conduct Toward Children and Youth.
Our goal is both to impede criminal conduct toward children and youth by empowering communities to take action to protect them when violations occur, and to develop ongoing strategies to ensure and defend their rights and safety.
In Guatemala and Honduras, our legal teams engage in strategic litigation to prosecute traffickers. Covenant House Guatemala is one of the leading organizations in the nation in terms of the number of successful prosecutions. In both Guatemala and Honduras, we ensure our young complainants have the psycho-judicial support they need during these complex processes.
To inform and support systemic change, our houses in Latin America engage with like-minded organizations in anti-trafficking networks and also work at the legislative and policy levels. In one recent example, Covenant House Guatemala played a key role in the government’s creation of a Special Prosecutor’s Office to Fight Human Trafficking.