At the Colectivo de Derechos de Infancia y Adolescencia 4th Annual Meeting, more than 30 specialists and people related to Children and Human Rights, together with boys and girls who form the net, met last October 6 th and 7 th in order to interchange ideas and conclusions about the results of their local experience in incidence actions. They also met to continue with the series of workshops Programming in Rights of Children, that they have been developing for two years.

Besides, they discussed about the penal system for infancy, facing the possibility that a new law may soon arise from the nine projects managed in Congress. The need for a wide guaranties system and one which transcends the narrow limit of imputability age, was an unanimous layout.

They also talked about internal communication, according a given axis plan, to later consider new strategies which enforce net ties.

Members of ANDHES (Lawyers from the Argentinean Northwest, specialists in Human Rights and Social Studies) noted that in the province of Tucumán , shortly after a law which adapted the local legislation to the national and international frame of child protection was enacted, Governor José Alperovich vetoed it.

A clear sample of this logic - as they explained – is the situation of children and adolescents lodged at the Institute General Roca, in that province, where non-allowed medicine would be being supplied to children. This would have been the cause of the death, last August, of a 17 year old adolescent who was lodged at that place. The organization was preparing an Habeas Corpus against the provincial Government, which was submitted days later.

With the juditialization of poverty –expressed people from ANDHES-, children are considered “not as subjects, but as objects of rights”. The organization is working on judicial cases against this paradigm and has recently achieved the deinstitutionalization of two children. Together with the lawyers' organization they have developed workshops and activities about strategies of litigation. Besides, they are preparing a project as an alternative to the Contraventions Law that, as they pointed out, is unconstitutional.

As for PRADE (Alternative Practice of Law), they pointed out the formation (10 month ago) of a local net of organizations about Children in Santiago del Estero . They also pointed out their active participation in the case of Francisco, an appropriated boy who has been separated from his family for more than a year, and paradigm of a situation of violation of Rights which seriously compromises the province. An interesting incidence action of PRADE are the workshops they develop for institute wardens, besides others about sexual abuse of children, they offer in other environments.

Red Buhito, which works in the province of Córdoba , has carried out “urban interventions” and expressed against Section 86 from the Code of Infractions, promoter of “a non-tolerance that is already working”, they noted.

“In the Capital City they are picking up children from the street”, they pointed out later. The net has an incidence on this stage with public accusations and advice, workshops for boys and girls (they have signed training agreements with the Municipality and with the Fundación Arcor) and discussion seminars, now focused on the application of National Law N* 26.061, about the Comprehensive Protection of the Rights of Children and Adolescents, the Code of infractions and deprivation of liberty. They also issue a magazine that promotes children participation.

One of the most polemical sections from the Code of Infractions of Córdoba is that which refers to marauding, a subject matter which concerns ADI (Association for the Rights of Children) members in Río Cuarto, who together with the Lawyers Association are analyzing and rephrasing the said issues. With regard to the rules referring to familiar violence, they achieved that judges “go out of their courtrooms” to discuss sections of a new law. The magistrates requested signing a document jointly to submit before the Judiciary. From ADI Río Cuarto they offer training workshops which provide tools for the children to know how to act in vulnerability situations, before the police or in discos.

Members of the Colectivo who work in San Luis emphasized on the last two meetings they carried out to form a local net for Infancy, in order to expand and enlarge their incidence capacity. They have taken place in cases of vulnerability accusations and this year they will participate in the workshops about Programming in Rights of Children (PDN). They highlighted the experience of last March 24 th , when they offer workshops on the violation of Rights during the last Military Dictatorship.

As far as Mendoza is concerned, people related to our subject matter are grouped in the net FEDEM (Federation of Non Governmental Entities for Children and Adolescents of Mendoza), they informed about “the risk of believing that with a new Law everything would change”. Eleven years have passed (since the province adapted their legislation to the Convention on the Rights of the Child) and only a few structures have been modified”. They pointed out the existing contradiction of “an advanced law with rigid structures from the old paradigm”. Although, they did not forget to mention that last year, they had monthly meetings with the Governor, something that –as they tell- started to dissipate until it disappeared. However, FEDEM continues with its active participation in the Provincial Council of Children and it is consulted by the Legislature about subjects related to Children.

People from Utopías de la Infancia, an organization with a strong activity in schools and neighborhoods from the locality of Florencio Varela in the Province of Buenos Aires mentioned their participation in the Children Forum of the Province of Buenos Aires, where the Law of the Province of Buenos Aires is discussed, a law that must be urgently enacted, since the current one is suspended. Inside, Utopías carries out projects as the making of an animated shortfilm, which is intended to be an adaptation of the Manual of the Arrested Child of the Correpi (Coordinator against Police Repression), and they also issue a newspaper which in its first edition included an interview with the awarded Nobel Peace Prize, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, made by the children. Another aspect they underlined was the organization intervention (with accompanying, theatre and other activities) in the deinstitutionalization of children deprived of their liberty who go back with their families “in the same or worse conditions than before”.

Those who are part of El Arca, an organization which takes care of 40 children in two houses in the neighborhood of Cuartel Quinto, in Moreno, Province of Buenos Aires, also participated of the Annual Meeting and showed their concerned about the infrastructure conditions in Vergel and Los Hornos, where, they assure, “there are no streets and children cannot go to school”. To have an incidence on this situation, members of El Arca are taking part of a discussion table with the municipality and they are promoting infrastructure works. They also highlighted their participation in the incipient Children Forum in Moreno .

From the Free Cathedra on Human Rights, which depends on the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the University of Buenos Aires, they commented on their participation in the National Secretariat of Children, Adolescents and Family for the regulation of Law N* 26.061, and they also pointed out that they were invited by the Ministry of Social Development to participate in the transference of the services of Infancy from the federal administration, mainly oriented to the Province of Buenos Aires and the Federal Capital. These actions add up to the workshops and training they give about the new law.

From the incidence actions and the advances locally achieved, from each organization, the Colectivo de Derechos de Infancia y Adolescencia strengthen as an national net, and recovers its work for children and adolescents to actively exercise their citizenship and to fully enjoy their Rights.