Childrens Rights and their Relation to the Different Types of Families

1
Childrens Rights and their Relation to the
Different Types of Families

• David Calderón
• MEXICO

Mexico, 27-29 October, 2004
2
Overview

• Conceiving rights as a form of action
• Reflections on Human Rights
• Children and adolescents within the context of
  their family configurations
• The role of public policies as strategies for
  enforcing the integral exercise of rights

3
Rights

• Definition of a fully-realized human being
• Individual and natural duties to reach the
  fullest and richest self-being that projects a
  consistent solidarity on other human beings
• The a priori universal and general condition of
  such duties, independently from the specific
  features of their holders
• Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989

4
The law of the weakest

• The rights of children and adolescents cannot
  and should not be subject to the asymmetry of
  purchasing power, the whims of voting, the
  ideology of governments, or the circumstantial
  agendas of NGOs
• Opposed to a non critical euphoria and a somber
  skepticism
• Harmonization among qualities and titles,
  indivisibility of Human Rights
• Guarantee of solidarity All the rights for all
  people

5
Rights and family contexts

• The rights of children and adolescents are
  realized under true living conditions
• Data on well being and welfare morbidity and
  mortality, poverty, mistreatment events,
  development, school failure
• Data on vulnerability dependency on assistance,
  risk behavior
• Data on inclusion employment level, academic
  development, creation of new families, citizen
  participation
• Indicators theoretical formulae, symptoms

6
Configurations

• Children and adolescents are family
• By themselves, different configurations suggest
  different strategies, although harmoniously
  coordinated
• The shared residence criterion is too
  restricted irrelevance of the extended or
  nuclear distinction

7
Relevant distinctions

• Vulnerability accrued by absence mono parental
  situation
• A commitment either non assumed in family
  creation or revoked in further stages
• Intersection of such factors as the overall
  income level, siblings and their degree of
  consanguinity, migration or location variety,
  belonging to an ethnic minority, educational
  differences
• Focusing strategies rather than establishing
  taxonomies

8
Public policies

• Suitable strategies for the respect and promotion
  of rights
• Not a mere set of plans and programs
• Not the exclusive task of the government
• Not a welfare package for individuals

9
What it truly is

• The actual implementation of the social pact
  expressed through the set of principles,
  criteria, and lines of action allowing for
  government plans and programs to be relevant,
  consistent, and assessable. The set of
  institutional strategies ensuring the state
  leadership in the solution of national problems,
  while promoting the joint responsibility of
  civil society, demanding a cross-sectional
  relation among the various government powers and
  hierarchies, and setting forth criteria for
  evaluation, accountability, and ongoing
  improvement in the performance of institutions
  and officials.  

10
Characteristics

• Coordinated Government, Civil Society and the
  families themselves
• Global Covering the various aspects of the
  problem
• Cross-sectional Involving the coordination among
  all powers and proceedings
• Integral Addressing children and adolescents
  inside their families and communities

11
A few clues

• Employment strategies, investment in upbringing
  practices, network strengthening
• Reduction of disintegration factors, joint
  responsibility of non residents
• Quality education (especially pre-school) and
  reflective community activities
• Universal access to utilities, without any
  complex segmentation
• Ensured harmonization between working and family
  life
• Strong investment on professionalization,
  counsel, and conciliation
• Tax incentives and reductions with a moderate
  income transfer
• Explicit reinforcement and extension of community
  participation

12
Public policy and family role

• Recognition expert knowledge and respectful
  assessment
• Support help required to minimize risks, remove
  obstacles, and overcome disadvantages impeding or
  hindering tasks that are the natural competence
  of families
• Protection whenever family configuration or
  condition already lost its favorable potential
• Promotion encouragement, incentive, and boost of
  right exercise