THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD IN THE INTER-AMERICAN HUMAN RIGHTS SYSTEM

SECOND EDITION

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

1.         The development of international human rights law pertaining to children in the region uses as a legal basis the American Convention on Human Rights, adopted on November 22, 1969.  This treaty includes a clause on the rights of the child and various provisions that specifically recognize their rights.[1] 

 

2.         With this as a precedent, the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 represented a landmark in the development of international human rights law related to protection of the human rights of children, as it changed the concept that identified the child as the object of protection to a concept that recognizes the child as a subject with human rights.  The impact of the Convention on the Rights of the Child is seen clearly in the growing importance of the issue of children in regional systems for the protection of human rights in Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

 

3.         The Rapporteurship on the Rights of the Child (the "Rapporteurship") of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (the “IACHR" or "the Commission") presents this second edition of the book entitled “Children and their Rights in the Inter-American System of Human Rights,” first published in 2002.  In this second edition there is a general discussion of mechanisms, and inter-American decisions on the rights of children. The attached compact disc includes the complete texts of instruments in the inter-American and universal systems related to children, the decisions adopted by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (the “Court" or "the Inter-American Court"), of cases involving children and the information required for access to the inter-American system.

 

4.         The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights thanks the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for the financial support it provided for this publication.

 

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[1] American Convention on Human Rights:  see Articles 4.5, 5.5, 13.4, 17, 19, 27.2.