Hello and good morning to everyone. I come from Bolivia, more specifically from the Department of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, where 2 million people live. It is considered the economic engine of the country, where 80 per cent of our wealth is created, but what is the problem there? This wealth is often produced in indigenous communities, by people living there. In these comunities, until 2008, the situation was of almost total slavery. In 2008, after the process of change that was implemented by President Evo Morales and the plurinational government of my country, the truth was revealed. So, in 2008 these communities and the Guaraní people were liberated and regained their freedom. They brought testimonies from those places, where they worked eighteen hours a day, earning just $42, where children also worked for 12 hours, in exchange for a piece of candy.
What situation are these people currently in? They are in a situation of complete risk and vulnerability to falling back into a situation of slavery. We, therefore, seek to create conditions that can provide the necessary opportunities for girls and boys to exercise their right to an education, to an integral education, without any kind of discrimination, and one that respects each of their cultures.
We, the young people, should lobby the political authorities in order to achieve a radical change. What we want to do is to carry out an information and awareness campaign, to achieve commitment and action of the local authorities. We want to incorporate the subject of Human Rights into school curricula, training in Human Rights, starting from textbooks, so that human trafficking, forced labour, sexual exploitation, early marriages and teenage pregnancies can also be prevented.
Once this integral education process is implemented, we want to provide these children and teenagers with the tools to generate their own life projects, in order to avoid any kind of the discrimination mentioned above. Therefore, our proposal is integrated within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) relating to education and the reduction of inequalities.
The reality today in Bolivia is that there are more brothels than schools, and because of that we want to start improvingt the education system as a form of violence prevention, working with ministeries and public offices to make these training workshops compulsory and required in schools, in order for them not to be just a choice, but an obligation. The answer lies in penetrating the education system for the prevention of violence.
Thank you.