Between January 2020 and December 2021, the International NGO Bullying Without Borders deployed a team of about 50,000 collaborators worldwide, where data was collected, mainly from the ministries of education of each country, communities, and territorial bodies, along with courts or criminal courts, an estimate was made of the number of cases of bullying that occur in each country.
Making a comparative display, Colombia is the tenth country in the world with the highest number of such cases of abuse.
To understand how the cases are considered, what constitutes bullying and what does not, the NGO uses the definition of the World Health Organization, WHO:
“Any physical, psychological or sexual intimidation or aggression against a person of school age repeatedly in such a way as to cause harm, fear, and sadness in the victim or a group of victims.”
According to the global director of Bullying Without Borders, Javier Miglino, bullying and cyberbullying kill an average of 200,000 children and young people worldwide every year, which is why they consider these two factors to be silent killers.
In the study, they assure that since 1990 these cases have skyrocketed at an ‘explosive’ rate and that for this compendium, they managed to determine that 85% of the registered cases occur in schools; 82% of children with disabilities are bullied precisely in these spaces; 74% of children between 8 and 14 years old have suffered, at least once, bullying.
They also estimated that more than 90 % of these situations are not reported or dealt with by teachers, who are in charge of the children in the classroom, which means that worldwide some 3 million children are absent from classes.
Another relevant point of the analysis is that 60% of bullies, bullies, or harassers (as they want to call them) will have at least one criminal problem when they reach adulthood. Another fact, not minor, is that 9 out of 10 homosexual students are bullied because of their orientation.
In the case of Colombia, to be much more specific, in this biennial period (2020 – 2021), 8,981 cases were calculated, even though the same analysis assures that there must be many more since several are not even reported, which makes it impossible to quantify them.
“It no longer happens as it used to happen in the past when those with higher school performance or physical attributes suffered bullying. Any reason is an excuse for bullying and harming, with victims receiving blows, threats, mockery, and cyberbullying on social networks for the mere publication of an image.
“In the case of Colombia, with boys, the main focus for bullying happens because of poor performance in sports activities. In general, bullies are more tolerant of a classmate with good grades or behavior outside the classroom canons than of one who does not play soccer, basketball, volleyball, or any other physical activity at school,” said the NGO’s director, Javier Miglino.
Of the 32 departments of the national territory, Cundinamarca has a 21% incidence of cases at the national level (the highest), followed by Antioquia with 13%, Barranquilla with 12%, and Cartagena with 10%.
However, Amazonas, Guainía, Guaviare, San Andrés, Vaupés, and Vichada do not have data to measure.
“Along with the sustained growth of bullying, more and more cases of harassment and abuse are being reported on Facebook and Twitter.
“There are legions of paid trolls and trolls who only attack out of pure malice and who do not discriminate between minors and adults – insulting, threatening, and inciting young people to suicide, taking offenses to unsustainable levels, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
“These true faceless killers are responsible for more than 200,000 deaths a year among children and adolescents around the world,” the report states.
TOP 10 COUNTRIES WITH THE MOST CASES WORLDWIDE
- Mexico
- United States
- China
- Brazil
- Japan
- India
- Spain
- Germany
- United Kingdom
- Colombia.
With information from Infobae