Some 52 percent of those who arrived at the border city of Paracaima, in the state of Roraima, were without proper documents and the rest were without parents, the report authored by the Federal Public Defenders Office said.

Lack of documentation leads to poor access to healthcare and other services in Brazil, while children traveling without parents are at a greater risk of human trafficking, experts said.

Facing a financial and humanitarian crisis, about one in every 10 people in Venezuela has fled the country in the past three years. About 85,000 are in Brazil, a number that is expected to grow in 2019.

“They arrive in a state of extreme vulnerability,” said Roberta Alvim, a federal public defender working in the border region.

The public defenders’ office has been assisting Venezuelan migrants in Brazil since December 2016 when it averted a mass deportation of 450 Venezuelans by Brazilian authorities.

They have also been registering the children as refugees, which grants them legal status in the country.

According to the report, children without their parents are most often accompanied by their grandmothers, aunts or sisters.

To avoid children being trafficked into the country, Brazilian authorities have a set of protocols in place that include interviewing the adults and children to ensure they are related.

“Usually, they are taking the child to be reunited with their parents that went before they did and are already established in Brazil,” said Alvim.

About 5 percent of the children mentioned in the report arrived completely alone.

“The number in the report is expressive, but more worrying than that is if the kid is unaccompanied and under 15,” said João Carlos Jarochinski, the coordinator of an international relations course at the Federal University of Roraima.

“Then it becomes a hunt for their parents.”

In case relatives are not found, children under 15 are put in group homes or with foster parents in Brazil. If the child is over 15, they can sometimes be emancipated, said Jarochinski.

Photo identification is required to enter Brazil, but in Venezuela, children under nine don’t have access to documents with pictures, just their birth certificates. About 15 percent of the children in the report arrived without even that.

“Recently, we were informed that there is no paper for birth certificates to be printed on, so many children and teenagers carry only a declaration ensuring they were born alive, issued by hospitals,” said the report.

“Since they have no documents at all, children aged 10 or 12 are being put in classes for first graders,” who are usually 6 years old, said Jarochinski.

This article was produced by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Visit them at http://www.thisisplace.org

Brazil’s president promised to provide whatever aid is necessary to the country’s northern state of Roraima, which has been overwhelmed by tens of thousands of desperate Venezuelans fleeing their country’s collapsing economy and political turmoil.

Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, has sought to consolidate power as the country’s economy collapses under the weight of a severe recession and hyper-inflation that topped 700 percent last year and could more than triple that figure in 2018.

Some 40,000 Venezuelans have poured into the Roraima capital, Boa Vista, overwhelming local government agencies and infrastructure in the city of 400,000. Many of the displaced Venezuelans are living in the streets.

Brazilian President Michel Temer interrupted his Carnival vacation to fly to Roraima on Monday, where he promised a federal task force will work with the state to resolve the crisis situation.

“I will not rest until we have solved the problems of Roraima,” Temer said during a meeting with the governor and various state and federal officials. “All necessary resources will be sent to solve this Venezuelan question.”

The president suggested that some migrants could be moved to other states, but insisted that Brazil would not turn its back on the people fleeing misery.

A List of Demands

Defense minister Raul Jungmann later said that the army would set up a field hospital along the border and work with local officials to build triage centers, the G1 news portal reported.

There are growing fears among local residents that the Venezuelans will take jobs away from Brazilians, who are concerned about their own country’s lackluster economy.

Two residences housing Venezuelans were set alight last week — five people were injured. A local man has been arrested in connection with the attack.

The Roraima government gave federal officials a list of demands last week, including equipment, vehicles and its own security forces. Temer’s government has so far agreed to double the number of federal security forces at the border to 200.

Many of those entering from crisis-hit Venezuela have walked hundreds of kilometers to reach Boa Vista, but have largely been left to sleep in public squares and other precarious parts of the city.

After his meeting with local officials Temer reaffirmed that the government will not block Venezuelans from entering but it may try to organize the flow.

DW

The ministry has warned the population of the danger of diseases, such as leptospirosis and rotavirus, and emphasized the need to purify water carefully before drinking it.

Meanwhile, Petrobras is studying alternative means of getting fuel to the state, many parts of which are completely isolated. A complicating factor is that Roraima depends on thermoelectric power plants that burn diesel fuel for its electricity.

In Brazilian capital Brasilia, the minister of National Integration, Fernando Bezerra Coelho, announced that the state of Roraima will receive 15 million reais (US$ 9.45 million) to assist the population and begin repairs of the damage caused by the heavy rains.

Coelho said most of the funds, 10 million reais (US$ 6.3 million), will go to recovering roads so isolated areas can be reached as soon as possible. The minister admitted that the amount allocated could increase depending on needs.

At the same time, Brasilia said it is prepared to distribute 10,000 food baskets to the state.

Roraima has had heavy rain for most of the last 30 days. The state governor, José de Anchieta Junior, points out that the rainy season in the region will last until August.

After reaching record levels, the Rio Branco, the river that runs through the capital of the state of Roraima, Boa Vista, has begun to drop but there are still locations that are isolated and run the risk of running out of supplies. The Rio Branco rose 10.2 meters (33.5 feet) above its normal level.

The Armed Forces have put 430 men on alert to help if needed after local authorities declared a public calamity. Many of the soldiers are from so-called border platoons that are specially trained for local conditions in the Amazon.

One thing the soldiers have is boats and they will be needed as transportation has become a serious problem not only because of the flooding. Local inhabitants face exorbitant prices for any travel as local boat owners take advantage of the situation.

Army helicopters have already delivered essential food and medicine items to isolated towns.

Meanwhile, the Navy is sending in two ships, one of them a hospital ship and the other for contact with isolated riverside communities. The Air Force has sent a cargo plane with 10 tons of food supplies (all of these have their base of operations in Manaus).

The Roraima Fire Department says its immediate priority is to assist those left homeless or forced to leave their homes (around 1,500 people are in that situation at the moment).

Firemen are making a special effort to get electricity flowing again. The main source of electricity in Roraima is from thermoelectric power plants that run on diesel. The problem is getting diesel fuel in on roads that have been flooded and severely damaged.

The weather forecast in Roraima for the next few days is partly cloudy with some sunshine and scattered rain showers. The good news is that the weather is not expected to make things worse.

With the arrival of a boat carrying 1.1 million liters of fuel in Caracaraí on Sunday (June 12), the supply situation in the state of Roraima has begun to improve. According to the president of the union of state gas stations in Roraima, Abel Mesquita, most of the June 12 shipment was sent on to the state capital, Boa Vista, and as another shipment is expected soon (with the fuel staying in Caracaraí, the state’s fourth largest city), the situation will soon be normalized.

A state of public calamity was declared in Roraima on June 5 due to rains that have caused severe flooding. The Rio Branco (river) reached record levels and is only now beginning to drop.

Roraima is Brazil’s northernmost state (although it straddles the equator, like two other Brazilian states (Pará and Amapá), the capital of Roraima, Boa Vista, is the only capital city in Brazil that is in the Northern Hemisphere; the capital of the state of Amapa, Macapa, lies on the equator).

Roraima has a population of 450,000 in an area of 224,000 square kilometers (slightly smaller than Minnesota), for a population density of 2 per square kilometer (population density in Minnesota is 25 per square kilometer).

Still in the North of Brazil, although in a different field, there are news that the recent executions of environmental activists will be investigated and the perpetrators punished, according to declarations by minister of Agrarian Development, Afonso Florence.

“The fact that in the past such crimes may have gone unpunished does not mean that will be the case now. We will not accept impunity,” said minister Florence.

As part of the government’s effort to avoid other similar crimes that are caused by land disputes, the minister announced the creation of two land deed offices in the state of Amazonas.

One, located in Humaitá, on the border with the state of Rondônia, and the other at Boca do Acre, near the state of Acre. According to the minister, the offices will speed up the process of land deed registration.

Minister Florence also pointed out that a total of 530 million reais (US$ 334 million) earmarked for land reform expropriations is still available. The money was not part of budget cuts that totaled 50 billion reais (US$ 31,5 billion) and will be used by the government as part of its action plans to alleviate tensions in areas of land conflicts.

The minister also discussed the question of foreigners buying large areas of farmland in Brazil. The matter, he said, was under investigation by the Office of Federal Prosecutors (Advocacia-Geral da União – AGU) and that he expected the AGU to issue a legal brief on the subject soon.

Florence also discussed the changing concept of land reform over the last few years, saying that the Dilma Rousseff administration is perfecting the process begun during the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva government.

ABr