ON THE WEEKEND that Panama schoolteachers announced a march to the presidential palace to protest unopened classrooms, deteriorating structures and to demand more money spent, on education the country’s First Lady was espousing education as the antidote to child labor.

Lorena Castillo de Varela was urging world leaders, to prioritize the eradication of child labor so that the rights of children, migrant adolescents and workers are guaranteed.

She made the call while participating in the Summit of Laureates and Leaders for Children 2018 in Jordan, with President Juan Carlos Varela, far from the crises at home sitting in the front row applauding.

The first lady pointed out that education is the antidote to combat child labor and the inequalities of the world while an IMF report fingers Panama for the number of people subsisting on around $300 a month with no money to ensure child education.

"It is everyone's responsibility to ensure and guarantee the full exercise of the rights of those who represent our present and future," she said

During her  speech, Castillo de Varela stressed that Panama maintains programs aimed at social protection, where the role of education is key to achieving positive results and  said  that

the country has committed to comply with the established roadmap of becoming a country free of child labor in its worst forms and in its entirety by the year 2020.

She claimed that Panama is one of the countries in Latin America that has reduced the number of girls and boys in labor situations, achieving that between 2008 and 2016, 75% of the population in that condition was withdrawn.

She was accompanied at the Summit t by a bevy of government officials enjoying the hospitality of the Jordanian Government.