`Our Right is the Right to Be Killed'

Abstract

This study seeks to understand the ways in which street children in Guatemala City are empowered or disempowered to defend their basic rights, on the street and in the courts. Through in-depth interviews with youths living on the street and those who work with them, I look closely at the process by which street children decide to file denuncias - to take the first step in opening a legal case to seek justice for abuses suffered. I argue that the decision to take legal action is not based on concrete expectations of legal redress so much as belief in basic human rights principles. The likelihood that an individual child will find human rights rhetoric as relevant has less to do with his or her lived experience of the legal system, and more to do with his or her perceived connectedness to mainstream society and its institutions. The more marginalized a child perceives herself to be, the more likely she is to eschew conventional attempts to convince her she has rights to be defended. In social spaces of truly extreme marginality, legal rights lose meaning. This has clearly important implications for any attempt to secure rights for the marginalized.