Previous Story
367 children and adolescents have been murdered in Ecuador this 2023
Posted On 13 Dec 2023
A year of terror. That has meant 2023 for the country’s children and adolescents. Criminal violence has drastically attacked the most defenseless.
Five provinces are the most violent for minors.
EL TELÉGRAFO accessed a Ministry of Government database and found that this year 367 children and adolescents have been murdered . The figure is the highest in the last three years.
Official data indicates that in 2022 there were 289 crimes involving minors. And in 2021, 135 were reported. That means that, in two years, attacks on infants and minors increased by 171% .
In fact, the figure shows that on average one child dies violently every day. But who is the most vulnerable group?
The Government has a segmentation of victims by age. Children between 0 and 4 years old are the most attacked . The data shows that in the last three years, 223 minors of these ages were murdered. On the other hand, the number of children between 6 and 9 years old who lost their lives violently reaches a total of 33.
Adolescents are also segmented by age. The most vulnerable are those between 15 and 19 years old. In this group, 475 adolescents have been murdered in the last three years .
Violence against minors also coincides with the places with the highest crime rates in the country. On the list of provinces with the most losses of infants and adolescents are Guayas (275), Los Ríos (98), Esmeraldas (95) and Manabí (90) . The figures correspond to the last three years.
Added to these terrifying figures is another one that generates shock. 72% of murders of children and adolescents are carried out with firearms. 15% have knives as protagonists. The rest die from blunt weapons or from asphyxiation.
