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[Work Plan]
Inter-American Children’s Institute (IIN)
1. Activities Assigned by the Program
The Program assigns the following two specific activities to
the Inter-American Children’s Institute:
• Include in its activities the
special situation of unaccompanied migrant children.
• Include in its activities
the protection of juvenile victims of trafficking in
persons.
2. Activities Carried Out
Objective No. 1: “Promotion of the exchange of best
practices and cooperation among sending, transit, and
receiving countries in order to fully respect and protect
the human rights of all migrants, including migrant workers
and their families.”
• III Forum of NGOs on
Children and Adolescents in Ibero-America, Committee on the
subject of “Migrations,” October 3-5, 2006, Montevideo;
played an active part with the meeting’s technical committee
in preparing the working document for the Forum. The
technical committee comprised NGOs and international
organizations. The Institute also contributed pertinent and
up-to-date information on the key subject of the databases
being developed by the IIN’s PIINFA Information Program.
• Ibero-American Conference
of Ministers and High-Level Officials responsible for Child
and Adolescent Affairs, “Migration and its Effects on the
Rights of Children and Adolescents,” October 5-7, 2006,
Montevideo. IIN’s participation took various forms.
• Keynote lecture by the
Acting Director General of the IIN, entitled “Migrations,
from solidarity to insensitivity: an overdue but latent
debate.”
• Participation in the
technical committee organizing the meeting in July-October
2006. Participation and moderator functions in the technical
discussion groups with the specialists accompanying the
ministerial delegations, parallel to the Ministerial
Meeting.
• III Conference of the
Latin American and Caribbean Network Childwatch
International, “Childhood and Youth: Dislocations and
Changes,” July 17-19, 2006, Mexico City. The IIN has been a
member of the Childwatch International Researchers Network
for many years. On this occasion, it took part in the
roundtable discussion of “Dislocations and Changes” and
presented a research paper prepared specifically for the
meeting, entitled “Children, Rights, and Migration.”
Objective No. 2: “Effective and efficient migration
management, through the exchange of best practices with a
view to achieving organized, fair, and controlled migration
processes, which may constitute a factor in economic and
social development and take family interests into account,
including family reunification.”
The “Site for the Coordination of Actions for Children and
Adolescents” is a project implemented by the IIN with the
support of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA),
in order to help generate integral information forums that
may help bring about changes in the living conditions of
children and adolescents in the Americas. This site includes
information on Central America, Belize, Panama, and the
Dominican Republic.
The aim of the Site is to make working mechanisms and
procedures available to encourage coordinated actions by
those involved in children’s rights issues, so as to
generate greater efficiency in the exchange of information,
coordination, and monitoring of regional policies and
situations regarding children.
It allows different countries to coordinate and work
together to solve problems (specific cases) concerning
children and adolescents which originate in a specific
country and can involve other countries in the region. Some
of these cases may be:
• Illicit international
transfer of children by one of their parents;
• Support obligations of
parents residing in a country other than that of their
children;
• Inter-country adoptions;
• Disappearance of children and
adolescents;
• Traffic and trade of
children and adolescents;
• Commercial and
non-commercial sexual exploitation of children and
adolescents living outside the country;
• Return of children to
their nuclear family;
• All types of situations
in which the basic rights of children and adolescents are
violated and they are in a country other than that of their
parents.
Objective No. 3: “Prevention and technical cooperation in
the fight against trafficking in persons, investigation, and
criminal prosecution of the persons responsible for this
crime, and protection and assistance to victims of
trafficking.” And “[P]revention and technical cooperation in
the fight against the smuggling of migrants, and
investigation and criminal prosecution of migrant
smugglers.”
• Signature of the “General
Cooperation Agreement between the Inter-American Children’s
Institute and the Inter-American Center against
Disappearance, Exploitation, and Trafficking.”
• With the signing of this agreement came joint
participation in the “Launching of the International
Campaign to Find Disappeared Children” on May 25, 2006,
International Disappeared Children’s Day.
• Dissemination of the
www.latinoamericanosdesaparecidos.org/voluntarios.php,
website to find volunteers for detecting and preventing the
disappearance of children of the inter-American system.
• Signature of the
“Cooperation Agreement between Save the Children Sweden and
the Inter-American Children’s Institute.” One of the most
salient projects in the framework of this Agreement – namely
the “Comprehensive Study of Laws and Public Policies against
the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Latin
America” – is currently underway. An outcome of this study
will be a meticulous piece of research focusing on two broad
areas: the policies developed in this field by the countries
in the inter-American system, as expressed in their National
Action Plans, and an exhaustive directory of national laws
and regulations specifically related to commercial sexual
exploitation and closely related laws and regulations, such
as those governing migration and migration policies in Latin
America.
• Ever since resolution
AG/RES. 1667 (XXIX-O/99) of June 7, 1999, the IIN has
presented the OAS General Assembly with its “Report to the
OAS Secretary General on the Situation of Commercial Sexual
Exploitation of Children and Adolescents in the Americas.”
The seventh report was presented in 2006.
3. Activities Being Planned
• Completion of the
definitive study for the project entitled “Inter-American
Observatory on the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of
Children and Adolescents” to be developed with Save the
Children Sweden and ECPAT International.
• Planning implementation
of the “Children’s Rights Monitoring System” (RMS) of the
Child and Family Inter-American Information Program (PIINFA).
• Production of the Eighth
Report to the OAS Secretary General on the Situation of
Sexual Exploitation of Children in the Americas, which
comprises:
• Compiling information
from 34 member states of the OAS, and preparing a
consultation protocol on public policies, legislation, and
monitoring systems.
• Processing the
information obtained and preparing a draft paper with the
principal findings.
• Supporting the
preparation of national action plans for the eradication of
the commercial and non-commercial sexual exploitation of
children and adolescents in the framework of the public
policies and sound practices available in the inter-American
system.
• Prepare an analytical
report on national action plans for eradicating child labor
in the inter-American system, as an input for drawing up a
regional strategy for fighting this phenomenon.
• “Inter-American Program
of Cooperation to Prevent and Remedy Cases of International
Abduction of Children by One of Their Parents,” which will
entail, inter alia:
• Permanent coordination
with Hague Convention representation
• Organizing the first
meeting of government experts with the participation of the
central government authorities of member states of the
Organization of American States.
• Generating a preliminary
draft model law for Preventing and Remedying Cases of
International Abduction of Children by One of Their Parents.
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