Ecuador – High Level of School-Related Sexual Violence & Challenges for Justice
Author: Administrator
Date: February 18, 2021
This is the pain that I have – I’m not only fighting against my child’s abuser, and his lawyer… No, this is a constant fight against the whole education system… the prosecutor… it’s a constant fight. They [school and prosecutor’s office] tell us they’ll give us support. [But] when the time comes, [we] get nothing at all. – – Fabián Salguero, whose son, 5 at the time, was raped by a teacher in a public school in Quito in 2018
December 9, 2020 – Sexual and gender-based violence has been a long-standing, endemic problem in Ecuador’s education system, with high levels of sexual violence from pre-school to high school. For decades, Ecuador has failed hundreds of children and adolescents, impacting their right to education, their right to be protected from violence, the integrity of their sexual and reproductive rights, and their right to redress. Between 2014 and May 2020, Ecuador’s Ministry of Education registered 3,607 complaints of school-related sexual violence. Some cases involved more than one student: 4,221 children and adolescents suffered sexual violence by teachers, school staff, janitors, school bus drivers, and fellow students. Given the generally low levels of reporting of gender-based violence and school-related sexual violence in Ecuador, those cases likely represent only a proportion of actual school-related cases of sexual violence across the country.
Over the last decade, Ecuador’s governments have approached the issue in disparate ways. Between 2011 and 2017, under President Rafael Correa, the government adopted a protocol and a national plan to eradicate sexual offenses in the education system and rolled out a national campaign. But virtually no money was spent on the plan’s execution. At national level, civil society groups were often not able to conduct crucial prevention work in schools. Ecuador’s state comptroller and evaluations conducted by the National Assembly afterwards established that ministers under the Correa administration had been responsible for the failure to systemically tackle and respond to cases of sexual violence, and for the rise in cases of school-related sexual violence.
English: Human Rights Watch.
Spanish: Human Rights Watch
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