Parameters and procedures of the inter American system on child rights violations processes

Regionalization of human rights is an important trend observed since the mid-twentieth century. In the Americas this trend is represented by the Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (1948) and the American Convention on Human Rights (1969) - the most comprehensive regional laws signed. Such regionalization is also evidenced by the Inter-American Commission (1969) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (1979) - institutions whose mandate is to investigate violations of these and other human rights treaties.  

This articles aims to investigate the parameters and procedures adopted by the Commission and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights concerning child rights violations processes.

It is in the inter-regional scale that effective punishment to rights violations committed by the State takes place; however, these regional institutions have structural limitations to judge all violations demands. This initial presupposition triggers the need to investigate the following questions:

1)      What are the parameters and the procedures adopted by the Commission and the Court to select and solve the demands of child rights violations?

2)      What are the repercussions of the court decisions related to the processes of child rights violations in the State where these violations occur?

The empirical investigation consists of a comparative research of all child rights violations cases judged by the Court between 1993 and 2004. These cases are analysed from two perspectives: a) At the national scale, the possibilities which delimit the access of the violations cases to the Inter-American system are verified b) At the Inter-American scale the court decisions are analysed to understand  its procedural tendencies in relation to child rights violations issues.