Venezuela’s earthquake children are caught between disaster, uncertainty, and a fragile protection system
Originally published on Global Voices
Drawings made by children in the Parque del Oeste displacement camp in Caracas, Venezuela. 2026. Photo by María de los Ángeles Graterol. Used with permission.
By Cristina González y Josué de Freitas
This article was originally published by La Vida de Nos on July 5, 2026. An edited version is republished by Global Voices as part of a content partnership agreement. The report includes field research by Angélica Lugo, Gabriela Rojas, and Mariana Souquett. It is part of the series “The Earthquake Children,” produced by La Vida de Nos in collaboration with Monitor de Víctimas and Tal Cual.
Caribe Residential Tower, in Caraballeda, La Guaira state, is no longer a building. It is now a mountain of shattered concrete, beneath which 13-year-old twins Aron and Aranza Mendoza Orias may still be trapped. The last time anyone heard from them, they were in their apartment with their mother, Yesenia Orias.
That was before the earthquakes. Now, their whereabouts remain unknown.
Ariari Mendoza, Orias’s husband — and the twins’ father — hasn’t stopped searching. He walks through the rubble, asks questions, and digs through debris with his bare hands when necessary. Relatives and friends have joined the effort because government assistance has been limited. When rescue teams do arrive, they often lack the heavy machinery needed to break through the collapsed concrete.
On June 27, three days after the earthquakes, they managed to reach two of the apartment’s rooms but found no sign of the teenagers. Since there was no odor indicating fatalities, they hoped the twins had either escaped or were still alive.
From Caracas, the twins’ 37-year-old cousin, Andrés García, is also searching. His greatest concern is that Aron is autistic. If someone finds him alive but frightened and disoriented, he may not be able to tell them who he is or where he comes from.
The twins are among the 3.9 million children and adolescents whom the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates live in the Venezuelan areas affected by the recent earthquakes. Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Venezuela’s Organic Law for the Protection of Children and Adolescents (LOPNNA), they are all entitled to special protection.
Portrait of Andrés García, cousin of the twins Aron and Aranza Mendoza Orias. Photo by Angelica Lugo, 2026. Used with permission.
The earthquakes severely damaged the La Guaira office of the Municipal Council for the Protection of Children and Adolescents (CMDNNA), the body responsible for safeguarding children’s rights. All five protection officers survived, though one was injured and others lost relatives or close friends.
Three days after the disaster, Venezuela’s National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents (IDENNA) issued emergency instructions for the entire child protection system. The following day, a temporary office opened in La Guaira, where four active protection officers resumed operations alongside other state agencies and international organizations.
However, a report by the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) Cecodap and REDHNNA found that while the child protection system maintained a basic response capacity, helping prevent a widespread protection crisis through July 2, it also exposed major weaknesses, including fragmented coordination between agencies and the lack of pre-established disaster response protocols.
“The emergency exposed significant gaps,” the report states. “The possible need to relax territorial jurisdiction, deploy protection officers from other municipalities, issue measures outside their normal authority, and rely on exceptional legal mechanisms suggests that the Child Protection System’s existing framework does not provide clear or rapid responses for large-scale disasters.”
At Caracas’ Miguel Pérez Carreño Hospital, staff improvised a method born of necessity: they photographed rescued children and, if they could speak, asked for basic information — their names, their parents’ names, and where they had been found. They then wrote those details on the children’s arms with permanent marker, unsure what other records might survive the chaos.
At the time, there was no clearly understood protocol to follow. When asked how they knew what to do, one hospital worker said they relied mostly on common sense. The only firm instruction they received was not to release any child unless the person claiming them could prove, with documents, that they were a relative.
On June 27, three days after the earthquakes, IDENNA announced the activation of a nationwide emergency child protection protocol. One of its key measures established “universal and concurrent jurisdiction,” prohibiting public and private health facilities from delaying or denying medical care to children because they lacked identification documents or were unaccompanied by a legal guardian.
To help reunite families and reduce misinformation on social media, IDENNA also ordered that every child's identifying and medical information be sent to its central office within 12 hours, creating a unified database for locating missing children and reconnecting them with their families.
The race to reunite families
Volunteer in displacement camp in Parque del Oeste, Caracas, Venezuela taking note of people in the camp. Photograph by María de los Ángeles. Used with permission.
A notice posted in the emergency department of Caracas’ Vargas Hospital on June 28 outlined a clear protocol. Any case involving a child had to be referred directly to IDENNA and the Municipal Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents, both of which had staff stationed in the pediatric emergency unit. At the time, hospital staff and council officials reported that five children were being treated there.
The following day, the walls outside the emergency rooms at Pérez Carreño Hospital were covered with handwritten notices listing missing people and patients admitted after the earthquakes. Amid the crowds, Child Protection Council officials were on site but declined to speak to the press. An IDENNA staff member said 24 children were being treated at the hospital and that all were accompanied by their parents or legal guardians.
The atmosphere was quieter at the University Hospital of Caracas, where a few missing persons posters included QR codes linking to a Ministry of Health database of patients receiving treatment. There were no Child Protection Council officials stationed at the hospital.
The pediatric emergency department said no children were unaccompanied; however, a physician in the intensive care unit said a teenage girl, Yasbelis Daniela Cortez González, whose name does not appear in the Ministry of Health’s patient database, was there without her parents.
The doctor, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, said he only hopes her family can find her.
“For years, public administration capacity had been declining,” says Lily Torres, president of Asonacop, “and a crisis like this only magnifies those weaknesses exponentially.”
She points to long-standing shortcomings in child protection councils before the disaster: limited office supplies, understaffed teams, and incomplete multidisciplinary units — the psychologists, social workers, and other specialists who should support protection officers in their daily work.
In response, Cecodap and REDHNNA recommend creating a national emergency coordination system to prevent responses from relying on improvisation. They propose a permanent platform where IDENNA, child protection councils, prosecutors, courts, health authorities, and civil society organizations can follow shared procedures, exchange information, and coordinate family reunification.
The organizations also stress that information itself is part of child protection. They call for official verification systems and regular updates to reduce misinformation and prevent further risks.