Not sure how that’s allowed to stay up.
The cost of Covid keeps rising:
The U.N. agency estimates that Latin American children missed 159 school days on average over the past year, compared with the global average of 95. Only seven out of the 35 countries in the region have fully reopened schools, leaving 114 million young people out of the classroom in what Unicef has called an unfolding “generational catastrophe.”
But unlike in other parts of the world, idle children in poor districts in Latin America from Mexico to Brazil are particularly vulnerable to powerful, cocaine-trafficking organizations. In Colombia, rights activists documented the recruitment of children in 22 of the country’s 32 provinces during the pandemic, with most cases taking place in rural provinces where the government has little presence and drug-smuggling syndicates hold sway.
A group that researches the impact of drug-related violence on children here, the Coalition Against the Involvement of Children in Colombia’s Conflict, said armed groups recruited 220 youths between 12 and 17 in 2020, an 11% increase from 2019. But the number of child recruits could be far higher, because it is believed few families report that their children joined armed gangs for fear of retribution, said Trian Zuñiga, who until last month was the top human rights official in this province, Guaviare.