CHILDREN’S RIGHTS IN LATIN AMERICA

Puga, T.

President of Latin American Association of Pediatrics

 

Patches of pain may suddenly interrupt everyday life. Rights of the child and adolescent need volunteers to change this reality. The International Convention is a legal institution that was approved more than a decade ago by UN. It is close to a civilization dream. Contraction of state social organisms and the assignment of their activities to private sectors in an adjustment context did not allow to carry out law improvements. More than a half of 183 millions of poor in Latin America are children and adolescents. 12 million children under the age of five die every year in developmental countries. Seven to ten deaths during childhood are due to prevalent diseases, what OMS and OPS has spread out as AIEPI. The impact of this situation remains in deprivation, violence and desegregation. Child labor has increased in Latin American cities. In developed communities sexual exploitation and pornography as different ways of slavery are more serious than in other parts of the countries. According to OIT, 214,000 children work nowadays in Argentina, more than Uruguay, Chile, Cuba and Venezuela. Tortures and cruel behaviors that police applies on children are for concern. Accusations of lives traffic have increased lately. The paediatricians members of ALAPE and the International Caucus intetrated by more than 200 ONGs from all over the world, reassured their commitment to the principles of the Convention on Children’s Rights, in the XII Latin American Congress of Paediatrics last December. The Irregular situation doctrine, legal expression of the Latin American model of social segregation, must be replaced by the Integral protection doctrine, which stakes to ensure rights for every child who would change of being object to be subject of rights. This states new ethics: everything that is right of the child, is a due to adult generations. As the famous writer André Gide said, “...every thing has been said, but as nobody seem to be listening, it is necessary to repeat those again and again”. And we add those have to be assumed.

 

 

 
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