Minister of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility Luis Vayas and UNICEF representative in Ecuador Luz Angela Melo analyzed the document.

The UN agency’s help will be beneficial in the executive’s goal of reducing the childhood chronic malnutrition rates.

According to data from the Government and UNICEF, 27 percent of children from age two to five suffer from that scourge, while eight out of every 100 adolescents under 14 became pregnant due to sexual violence and there was an 8.91 percent increase in child labor in 2017.

The Foreign Ministry stated that in order to reduce those figures and provide a better quality of life for children and adolescents, the executive seeks to generate joint actions with UNICEF, also aimed at reducing post-pandemic school dropouts, teenage pregnancy and eradicating violence in the family environment and at schools.

Ecuador is the first country in Latin America and the third globally to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child and enshrines in the Constitution the principle of the best interests of the child, in addition to having regulations determining the duty to protect victims of child abuse and the classification of crimes of violence against women.

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