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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