Venezuelan Mothers Harassed Into Selling Their Babies in Brazil’s Roraima State

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Young Venezuelan mothers and pregnant women who come to Brazil to escape the crisis in their country and living in Roraima report they have been harassed by people seeking to buy their children.

In June and July, G1 news site heard accounts from three homeless women in Boa Vista. According to them, offers range from R$200 (US$50 ) to R$6,000 (US$1,500) per child.

The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office and the State Prosecutor’s Office have received reports of such cases. The Federal Police are investigating but do not provide details.

The Children and Adolescents Statute (Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente – ECA) provides that it is a crime to “promise or effect the surrender of a child or mentee to a third party, against payment or reward.”

The penalty ranges from one to four years of imprisonment and a fine.

A 25-year-old Venezuelan woman said that in June, a Brazilian woman offered her R$6,000 for her youngest daughter, only six months old. The woman said she had been approached when she was with the child in a supermarket in Boa Vista.

In September 2018, a man from Bangladesh and a Brazilian woman were arrested in the act by the Federal Police as they attempted to register the newborn daughter of a Venezuelan woman at a notary office in the capital. According to the Federal Police, the price was R$2,000.

In addition to cases where mothers are harassed into selling their babies, the Roraima Legislative Assembly recorded six cases of human trafficking involving Venezuelan victims in the first half of this year, without detailing the circumstances in which they occurred.

A survey by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) conducted in 2018 pointed out the risks of sexual exploitation, threats of violence and child labor of Venezuelan children in Roraima.

In Venezuela, a country sunk in a worsening political, social, and economic crisis, there are reported cases of mothers giving up their children so that they will not die of hunger.