Addressing Thursday the forum “Childhood First”, to commemorate 35 years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Melo recalled that Ecuador was the first country in the region to ratify that treaty.

Among the milestones achieved in years gone by, she highlighted that since 1989 to date the infant mortality rate went from 50 to eight deaths per thousand live births, access to basic education became something “almost universal”, hand in hand with vaccination campaigns that eradicated diseases such as polio and measles.

However, she regretted that currently one in five children suffers from chronic malnutrition, one in two is affected by physical or psychological violence in their homes, and every day five girls between 10- and 14-years old give birth due to sexual abuse.

These days, she noted, minors are recruited by criminal groups, especially in socially disadvantaged communities that do not offer them opportunities for growth.

The UNICEF representative reiterated that it is not the richest who are recruited by criminal gangs, but the poor and the vulnerable, who are badly in need of treatment to leave such situation behind.

Once this country counted on an inadequate child protection system, but today it no longer exists at all, insisted Melo, who made an urgent call to the State to re-establish that system.

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