The Adolescent and Development Health Unit (CA/PAHO) and the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) currently work in the program Fomento del desarrollo juvenil y prevención de la violencia (Promotion of the juvenile development and prevention of violence). This project has been implemented in Argentina, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, and Honduras, and tries to promote the participation of the young people in the programs that foster the development of youth and the prevention of violence, through promotion, public policy-making, management of the knowledge, and dissemination and promotion of innovative and participatory experiences.
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Regional programs and activities
When the societies do not support and protect the rights of your young people and do not manage to provide healthy environments in which they can be developed, subjects as violence, the drug use, and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, prevent that become healthy and productive adults (PAHO).
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Juvenile violence is one of the most important problems of health public that confront the Americas. The adolescents are victims of the crime in a proportion twice higher than that of the adults over 25 years of age. In the `Region of the Americas`, the homicides concentrate on the young male population, from 15 to 24 years, and at the end of the 1980s it was the second cause of death in half of the Latin American countries with more than 1 million inhabitants. In Colombia, for example, between 1991 and 1995 112,000 people were murdered, of which 41,000 they were young people; in El Salvador, in 1984, the homicide rate in the group masculine from 15 to 24 years was of 144.4 per every a hundred thousand; and in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1989), per every a hundred thousand `population`, 95 died murdered. The victims were mainly young of the male sex. The lack of employment and the opportunities for education, the lack of social controls, a weak family structure, the social exclusion, and the levels of the poverty are key factors that contribute to the high levels of violence in the Region.
The Directing Council of the Pan American Health Organization at your XXXVII Meeting (1993), considering the increase of the violent behaviors as a public health problem of great importance, issued Resolution CD37.R19, through which urged to the Governments of the Region to that establish national plans and policies, and to that mobilize resources for the prevention of all the forms of // violence. At the same time, the Directing Council approved the Regional Action Plan on Violence and Health.
In the foregoing recognition, in 1992 the Directing Council of PAHO approved the Plan of Action on comprehensive health of the adolescents in the Americas. Also, in compliance with recommendations of the same governing agency, has found support to the governments in the knowledge of the true magnitude of the problem of violence and in the identification of the risk factors, always respecting the autonomy of the countries and complex and sensitive nature of the subject.
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