Systems for the Comprehensive Protection of Children: National Plans and Monitoring

Presentation by Edson Seda

www.edsonseda.com.br

edsonseda@uol.com.br

A better world for our children

22-25 September, 2009, Lima-Peru

Of Principles and Practices

• Comprehensive protection is the protection of all; the elderly, adults, adolescents and children, with absolute priority regarding the age group which comprises adolescents and children, in national plans and monitoring systems which guarantee human rights. Those who do not put good principles into practice invent principles for their bad practices. The Law cannot continue to lag behind the facts. It cannot continue to lag behind its duties regarding “human rights”.

International Pacts

•The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The invisibility of children. •The Declaration of the Rights of the Child (DRC) of 1959. The previous declaration had applied only to adults. •The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) of 1966. Resistance to applying the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, proclaimed in the 18th century, to discriminated persons.• The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) of 1979. The traditional invisibility of women in terms of human rights.•In 1989, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), with implementation clauses referring to the non-application of the 1959 Declaration.• The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families of 1990. The serious consequences of globalization.

The State, a Guardian of Rights, not of Persons

Within a “bureaucratic network”, the State insists on providing guardianship for “persons”. This violates civil rights (liberty, equality and fraternity) and social rights (family and community care regarding basic needs). In a “citizen network”, the non-governmental sphere has the means to prevent the “state” or “administrative” guardianship of persons. The guardianship of the “human rights” of persons is monitored.

A Convention for the Implementation of Rights

The 1989 Convention was proclaimed thirty years later in order to implement the unfulfilled rights declared in 1959.

The Construction of the Capacity of Children

•Bureaucratic network: In such a network, “minors” up to the age of seventeen years, eleven months, twenty-nine days, twenty-three hours, fifty-nine minutes, fifty-nine seconds, are “incapable”, and acquire capacity suddenly, one second before the age of eighteen. •Citizen network: In such a network, children acquire real, concrete, demonstrable capacity, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, year by year, in a permanent “individual condition of personal and social development”.

Article 12 of the 1989 Convention: “The Party States shall ensure the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting children. The views of the child will be given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.”

Adults of the Future, Citizens of the Present

• In a bureaucratic network: Minors are citizens of the future.

• In a citizen network: Children are the adults of the future and the citizens of the present.

Legislative, Educational, Social and Administrative Measures

Countries with a history of bureaucratic networks which signed sixteen clauses of the Convention of 1989, undertook to create citizen networks through legislative, educational, social and administrative means.

• (clauses 4, 7, 9, 19, 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 35, 38, 39, 40, 42, 44, 45)

Thinking Globally and Acting Locally

• Citizen network: Concurrent protection for every citizen and the whole of society. Community participation in decisions related to public action plans. Monitoring of rights in political-administrative decentralization

• Difference between deconcentration and decentralization. Related to thinking globally and acting locally.

The Issue of Invisibility

In national plans and the monitoring network:

•A bureaucratic network: A child is perceived as a “minor”. “Childhood” is invisible. • A citizen network: Makes the condition of being a child or adolescent, visible.

Thirteen American countries still have “invisible” children in terms of constitutional citizenship. In the USA, we hope Obama will say “Yes, We Can” to the 1989 Convention in order to guarantee the human rights of children; notably, the children of migrants.

THANK-YOU!

A better world for our children

22-25 September, 2009, Lima-Peru