The Afro-Panamanian Social Movement demanded this Friday an end to discrimination, violence and harassment of Afro-descendant children and youth in educational centers throughout the country.
Eunice Meneses, a member of this movement, pointed out that it is important and urgent to speak to society about one of the most painful issues that youth and children experience, a population that the Panamanian State is obliged to protect in all its phases.
He considered it necessary for educational centers to know that there is no rule that justifies violence and harassment in schools.
“Parents take their children confident that they will leave them in a place where they will be protected, where their identity will be strengthened, especially if we aspire to a 21st century education. This is extremely delicate, especially in the 21st century where we are betting on intercultural education. That colonialist mentality that we have within the educational system we have to work to eradicate it, ”she sentenced.
During the conference, the Afro-Panamanian movement denounced a case that was registered in the Libyan State School, in which a child was raped by his classmates for wearing a turban.
Along the same lines, a father and teacher shared that his daughter, who is studying at the José Dolores Moscote Institute, was discriminated against for using her braided hair.
Meneses and the group ask the Ministry of Education (Meduda) and especially the Ministry of Social Development (Mides), who is the guarantor of ensuring the development policies of our peoples, that the rights of children and young people of African descent be respected. and their cultural identity is not mutilated or curtailed in any educational establishment.
