Human Rights Watch report: sexual violence remains endemic in Ecuador’s schools

Sexual and gender-based violence is a long-standing, pervasive problem in Ecuador’s schools. The 60-page Human Rights Watch report, “‘Like Patchwork’: Ecuador’s Slow Progress Tackling and Preventing School-Related Sexual Violence,” documents significant gaps in the government’s response to prevent and tackle abuses in Ecuador’s education system. In the last four years alone, 2,827 cases of sexual violence were registered within the educational system mainly perpetrated by teachers, school authorities, other school staff, janitors, and often students.

In June 2020, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled against Ecuador in Paola Guzmán Albarracín v. Ecuador, the court’s first-ever case on school-related sexual violence, a landmark case upholding the rights of survivors of school related sexual violence in Ecuador. In addition to granting reparations to Paola’s family, the Inter-American Court ordered the Ecuadorian government to put numerous measures in place to prevent, tackle, and eradicate sexual violence in schools, with the overarching goals of addressing ongoing acts of violence and ensuring that such abuses do not continue. Nevertheless, activists interviewed by HRW revealed that “the same acts of sexual violence that Paola Guzmán suffered more than 20 years ago are still happening to other girls in schools around the country”.

From December 2022 to June 2024, Human Rights Watch conducted follow-up research to evaluate steps taken by the Ecuadorian government to tackle and prevent school-related sexual violence. The research coincided with students’ return to in-person schooling after a long period of online and remote learning due to school closures related to the Covid-19 pandemic, and further school closures due to widespread insecurity fueled by organized criminal gangs. The report found that despite commitments by government institutions, led by the Ministry of Education, sexual violence remains endemic in Ecuador’s schools. It shows that Ecuador has put in place numerous measures to comply with the Inter-American Court ruling in the case of Paola Guzmán Albarracín, but these measures have not progressed at the scale and pace needed to ensure that all children are safe from sexual violence in school settings.

Particularly, many schools still fail to report abuses or fully implement required protocols. Human Rights Watch found three prevailing reasons: 

• A lack of knowledge and follow-through of the Ministry of Education’s binding protocols; 
• the prioritization of school prestige and reputation over the need to protect students, reduce abuse, and hold perpetrators accountable; and
• a significant shortage of student welfare teams, including school psychologists and counselors.

In their recommendations, HRW emphasize that the Government of Ecuador must fully fund its prevention efforts, hire essential education and justice personnel, and ensure that judicial authorities effectively investigate and prosecute all cases of sexual violence in schools. The report concludes that to eliminate sexual violence in schools, Ecuador must end the complicity and impunity that exposes thousands of children to abuse and violates children's right to be safe at school.

For more information, click here for the full report.