Legislative prototypes on children's rights in the Americas


Espaņol

The Member States of the Organization of American States (OAS) are signatories of the 1989 International Convention on the Rights of the Child. This international instrument has generated significant change in the institutional and legislative realms with respect to children's rights in the hemisphere.

The Convention's provisions have influenced the emergence of entities exclusively devoted to children, and in the legislative realm they have proclaimed special Codes and laws on children throughout the hemisphere.

However, the process of legislative harmonization with the contents of the Convention does not end when these legal bodies are created. The legislative task is continuous and translates into the development of each section of the Convention to make the comprehensiveness of rights and the implementation of their principles into a reality in each Member State.

Along with the enormous influence that the Convention has had in our hemisphere, the work of the Inter-American Children's Institute (IACI) of accompanying these transformations has led to the consideration of the creation of regulatory models as a prototype that each State may use as a guideline for their work of legislative harmonization in specific areas.

The purpose of these regulatory models is to collaborate with legislators, civil society and officials in the national system of child affairs in each State party in order to obtain legislations that preserve and guarantee minimum contents pertaining to universal or inter-American standards currently in force on the subject.

We understand a model regulation to be:

A legislative prototype that, in the specific realm of children's rights, and created with a high level of participation by the final users, is a suitable model to be followed by OAS Member States in order to incorporate, into their national legislation, the universal principles that form the foundation of the specific model regulation in its sphere of expertise, such as, for example, child labor, disability, or sexual exploitation.

The IACI has considered the creation of the following model regulations:

  • Prototype of legislation on child labor
  • Prototype of legislation on disability
  • Prototype of legislation on drug abuse prevention
  • Prototype of legislation on commercial sexual exploitation.

Each of these is structured with a common format, allowing us to find out the most renowned doctrine as well as the governing principles in each field. Model legislation gathers the general ideas that have emerged on the subject, both in the universal system of human rights and children (United Nations) and the inter-American one (OAS), thus giving a clear idea of what can be considered a prototype regulation in each Member State.

A fundamental aspect of this regulation is the process of its creation and prior consultation, which may be summarized as follows:

  1. Preparation of reports and proposals for model regulations by consultants. The IACI will engage recognized consultants to prepare a report and a proposal for a model regulation on each proposed subject.
  2. Official approval of the model regulations by the IACI. At this stage, it is the IACI's role to guarantee the uniformity, coherence and comprehensiveness of the reports and model laws with respect to the pertinent international regulations in force.
  3. Sub-regional consultation workshops (groups of States). The reports and prototype regulations will be submitted to a certain number of States, to be enriched and validated.
  4. Launch and adoption of the model regulations.

The result of this process is to have a guide for the legislator or official responsible for social policies on children, guaranteeing the adoption of minimum legislative standards on specific subjects in the field children's rights.

Through its programs, the IACI provides direct technical assistance to Member States upon request. The prototypes will foster dialogue between the IACI and the Member States on the subject of child legislation and its practice in the hemisphere.

In the near future, there will be plans to promote prototypes in areas such as: adoption, young offenders, children and armed conflict, child refugees, etc.

In sum, with the launch of the legislative prototypes, the IACI is achieving the following:

  1. Reinforcing the impact that the International Convention on the Rights of the Child has had at the hemispheric level;
  2. Ensuring that the principles of child protection found in the Convention are developed in the secondary legislation of signatory States, especially OAS Member States;
  3. Guaranteeing that national legislations in the OAS Member States take and develop minimum standards on subjects such as: child labor, sexual exploitation of children, disability, drug abuse prevention, etc.
  4. Providing advisory services and technical assistance to the OAS Member States that are putting in place national regulations on these subjects, or plan to do so.
  5. Promoting legislation that for the protection of children in the hemisphere.