While protesters  gather daily   at the offices of Seniaff , the government body overseeing the children’s “shelters”  where complaints of physical, sexual and psychological abuse have surfaced in a 400-page report produced by a National Assembly committee. No heads have rolled although  President Cortizo promised a fast call to the tumbrils for any backsliders.

One of the names appearing on signs at the rallies is Karla Garcia who was recently promoted from Senniaf to become governor of Panama replacing the former deputy mayor who has assumed her old role. In Panama’s game of musical chairs, you have to move fast but not so fast when it comes to creating a system of guarantees and comprehensive protection of children. This initiative was presented in 2018 before the plenary session of the Legislature by the then Minister of Social Development, Alcibiades Vásquez, but it did not pass the filter of the Women's Commission.

For Jorge Giannareas, a specialist in social policy at the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), it is necessary to approve a framework law for children and adolescents, the creation of a policy of guarantees and comprehensive protection of children's rights, and the expansion and strengthening of a range of services to guarantee rights and provide care.

It sustains that the actions of “different institutions are either not well defined, or generate contradictions, or overlap each other, creating confusion, ambiguities, and gaps, which place children and adolescents in a situation of vulnerability in any of the moments of its life cycle ”.

Meanwhile, in the Assembly, at least six proposals on childhood are awaiting a second debate.

Despite the fact that the country is a signatory to various commitments, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified since 1990, the National Assembly has not been able to approve "a system of guarantees and comprehensive protection of children and adolescents", that has been requested by local and international experts.

In the Assembly, the approval of regulations that protect children and adolescents is null, there are about six proposals that address the issue, but they are awaiting a second and third debate by the plenary session.

 Domingo Barrios, president of Aldeas SOS, questioned yesterday in an interview on TVN how the State can demand a series of parameters of care, without even having a law in this regard.

“I want to make a call to the Women's Commission, after they have seen the result, of the Assembly not generating laws that promote monitoring, regulation and subsidies (...) to approve the standards that are required, ”he said.

GREATER RISK
The former magistrate and member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Esmeralda Arosemena de Troitiño, recalled on Radio Panama that recommendations have been made to the Panamanian State for more than 10 years. For example, sending children to institutional shelters is not the best option.

"It is proven that in these places children are at greater risk of being violated," she said. This scandal should serve to demand a halt and the investigations cannot stop at the fact that shelters are going to be closed. "We have to know which are these shelters and who are responsible for the violation of children's rights," she said.