Pro-Búsqueda is a

nongovernmental organization A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in h ...

from El Salvador dedicated to the search of children who were disappeared during the

Salvadoran Civil War The Salvadoran Civil War ( es, guerra civil de El Salvador) was a twelve year period of civil war in El Salvador that was fought between the government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front The Farabundo Ma ...

. Its full name (in Spanish) is “Asociación Pro-Búsqueda de Niñas y Niños Desaparecidos”, which translates as the Association for the Search of Disappeared Children. Since its start, in 1994, Pro-Búsqueda has documented hundreds of cases of children who were disappeared in the context of the Salvadoran civil war, most of them through the

forced disappearance An enforced disappearance (or forced disappearance) is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person by a State (polity), state or political organization, or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or po ...

by the Salvadoran armed forces. Through persistent research, Pro-Búsqueda has registered close to a thousand documented cases of disappeared children in El Salvador and the organization has been able to reunite hundreds of children with their biological families. Hundreds more remain unaccounted for.

History

Pro-Búsqueda was founded in San Salvador in 1994, by Jesuit priest

Jon Cortina Jon Cortina Garaigorta, S.J. (Bilbao, December 8, 1934 – Guatemala City, December 12, 2005) was a Jesuit priest, engineer, and activist, founder of Pro-Búsqueda, an organization dedicated to searching for the missing children of the Salvad ...

and human rights researchers Ralph Sprenkels, Mirna Perla and Dorothee Molders. Pro-Búsqueda efforts soon led to the first incidents of children kidnapped during the war being reunited with their biological families.

Physicians for Human Rights Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a US-based not-for-profit human rights NGO that uses medicine and science to document and advocate against mass atrocities and severe human rights violations around the world. PHR headquarters are in New ...

provided technical support the perform DNA testing for the families and children involved. In subsequent years, dozens of disappeared children were traced and identified by Pro-Búsqueda. Many of these children turned out to have been adopted, through flawed adoption mechanisms, to other countries. Pro-Búsqueda's research was able to locate disappeared children in the United States of America, France, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands, among other countries. On 1 March 2005, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights presented a historical resolution on one of Pro-Búsqueda's cases: the 1982 forced disappearance of the sisters Ernestina and Erlinda Serrano Cruz in the context of a large-scale military operation known as "Guinda de Mayo." In 2010 the Salvadoran government created a National Search Commission for Disappeared Children, operating with the country's State Department. Despite many years of lobbying the Salvadoran government and the armed forces for disclosure all relevant archives holding information concerning disappeared children, such access has not been granted.Sprenkels, R. (2012). La guerra como controversia: una reflexión sobre las secuelas políticas del informe de la Comisión de la Verdad para El Salvador. Identidades, 2(4), 68-89.

References

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External links

Pro-Búsqueda's official website

National Search Commission's official website
Organizations established in 1994 1994 establishments in El Salvador Organizations based in San Salvador Missing people organizations Child-related organizations