What Happened
A recent opinion piece published in La Prensa warns that Panama is failing to protect children and adolescents under state care. The article points to documented cases of psychological, physical and sexual abuse in state-run shelters overseen by the Secretaría Nacional de Niñez, Adolescencia y Familia (Senniaf), an agency attached to the Ministry of Social Development (Mides).
These allegations are not recent or isolated: complaints related to abuse and neglect date back to 2021, and include reports that some cases resulted in forced pregnancies and abortions. The piece also highlights discoveries of networks exploiting minors in areas such as Bocas del Toro and in border zones with Costa Rica, and a worrying rise in alerts about missing children and adolescents, particularly from indigenous areas.
Background
The article frames these events as a collective failure of Panamanian society and the State to uphold the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which requires that the best interests of the child be a primary consideration in all state decisions. It criticizes the lack of coordinated, sustained and effective state action to guarantee children’s rights and to protect minors separated from their families due to violence, criminality or abandonment.
Beyond the abuse allegations, the commentary calls out a broader pattern of institutional shortcomings: a focus on penal sanctions rather than prevention, an absence of policies with a gender, human-rights and intersectional approach, and proposals that would weaken existing protection mechanisms. The author also denounces the normalization of discriminatory rhetoric from positions of power, including prejudiced educational discourse targeting Afro-descendant children and adolescents.
What This Means
The article warns that impunity in these contexts amounts to institutional violence and that a punitive-only response is insufficient to address the root causes. Lack of preventive policies and weak protection frameworks leave socially at-risk children—especially girls, adolescents, indigenous and Afro-descendant minors—exposed to continued harm.
Recommendations made to Panama under the Examen Periódico Universal (Universal Periodic Review) are cited as an urgent roadmap to strengthen the national protection system for children and adolescents. The piece urges the State to move beyond episodic outrage and media coverage toward concrete, systemic reforms.
What Needs to Happen
The author calls for the State to create participatory spaces involving civil society to design and implement short- and medium-term measures that guarantee the best interests of the child. Strengthening prevention, integrating gender and intersectional perspectives, and rebuilding trust in protection institutions are presented as essential steps to stop further violations and to restore public confidence.
Note: The concerns summarized here are drawn from an opinion piece by a lawyer and human-rights defender published in La Prensa.