And while children in poverty-stricken Honduras are responsible for criminality, it is a tiny proportion of the problem ascribed to gang members. Their activities, however, have been inflated and compared with a terrorist assault on the state.
According to Amnesty International's report on Honduras last year, a 1999 study undertaken by the Honduran Institute for Children and the Family noted that only 0.02 per cent of all murders committed in Honduras were attributable to minors. The Honduran government itself has accepted that juvenile delinquency accounts for only around 5 percent of the country's crimes.
Against this background Amnesty launched its latest report on child killings in Honduras last week. It acknowledges that Honduras's Special Unit for the Investigation of Violent Deaths of Children has made some progress, but since its creation has looked at only 400 of more than 2,300 killings of children since January 1998. Only 88 cases were forwarded to the Attorney General's Office, and just three have resulted in a conviction.
Although the government has admitted police have been involved in many of the killings, only two officers have so far been convicted.
"Thousands of children in Honduras face a similar fate to Darwin," said Kate Allen, UK director of Amnesty International.
"The government should appoint ad hoc judges to work specifically on these cases. The future of the country depends on it."
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