Children’s Rights at Risk in Latin America

In order to combat crime and violence, many countries in Latin America have begun to modify children’s rights in the justice system as criminal organizations increasingly recruit youth to their ranks. Children are central targets for recruitment by criminal actors because they can carry out illicit operations of severe crime charges such as murders and kidnappings without facing heavy criminal charges as minors in the justice system. In Ecuador, an estimated 3,000 children are linked to criminal gangs, making them 24% of some criminal organizations. In El Salvador, over 3,000 children were arrested under President Bukele’s crackdown on gangs. This issue has sparked a legal conversation as to how governments dealing with armed conflict should handle the tendency of gangs and criminal organizations to target children and especially how to deal with children involved in these illicit activities.

Ecuador provides one example. In 2025, Ecuadorean president Daniel Noboa introduced the Public Integrity laws. In June 2025, the National Assembly approved this law to be in effect. The reform amends provision of Ecuador’s Child and Adolescent Code to increase criminal sentences for children. Prior to this law, the maximum sentence was 8 years; now children could be sentenced up to 15 years for crimes committed. Importantly, however, sentences may be reduced up to 50% if a minor provides information on the criminal groups they are involved with. This sentence reduction incentive could yield results in finding more criminals but criminal groups typically retaliate by threatening the lives of the children for the provision of such information.
Other provisions of the new Public Integrity laws made it such that if a youth in the justice system turns 18, they should be moved to “special sections” of adult prisons. These “special sections” are likely to be sections for prisoners whose charges are still pending but there are no further specifications in respect to these policing practices. The law also bans access to prison benefits such as open or semi-open regimes which allow minors to leave during the day for activities such as school while having to return to the facility to sleep. The new law also increases the pre-trial period of detainment for accused children from 90 days to one full year for children accused of serious crimes. The increased penalties are purportedly legally justified by the Ecuadorean government, which invokes "internal armed conflict” to diminish the legal protection of children. However, the Constitutional Court has not ruled what constitutes “internal armed conflict” under international law — the legal justification behind many of these reforms.

Similarly, El Salvador recently passed a life sentence law which amends the Juvenile Penal Law as part of its militarized approach against crime. The executive and the national assembly of El Salvador’s government system also passed a law altering the El Salvadoran Constitution, allowing life sentences for minors as young as 12 years old for crimes such as homicide, femicide, rape, and gang membership. The law took effect on April 26, 2026.

Although the legal justifications for these abridgments for children’s laws are characterized as a response to the security crisis underway in both countries, the repercussions of these punitive measures will likely not result in the desired results. El Salvador’s mega-prison system has had some success but has been notorious for indiscriminately arresting innocent people. There are no reforms introduced to reintegrate youth involved in crime in El Salvador and minors have been moved to adult prisons. Ecuador’s prison system is dominated by prominent gangs of Los Choneros, Los Lobos and others which are linked with criminal organized groups. This social context in the face of these new legal reforms indicates that imprisoned adolescents, especially in adult prisons, will likely endanger and entrench more youth in cycles of violence as they will be faced with the gang violence in a prison system co-opted by gangs while depriving them of the opportunity to integrate into society.