20 Years of Legislation on Childhood in Argentina. Progress and Setbacks in Key Rights and Guarantees

In 1994 Argentina included the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) to its National Constitution. From that moment on, it became imperative to adequate the internal legislation to CRC’s standards and prerogatives. Multiple legislative processes were activated. In terms of protection, and after several failure attempts, the 26.061 Law (of Integral Protection)was approved. Thus, different extreme situations of violation of rights became the subject of special and exceptional measures of protection, many of which require the control of judicial legality by civil family judges. In 2015, the new Civil and Commercial Code (CCC) containing innovations relevant to children and adolescent came into force. Combining the law of protection, the CCC with other laws with interference in the children and adolescent population (Sexual and Reproductive Health Law, Gender Identity Law, to name a few) has generated conflicts and tensions among the enforcement bodies, the institutions that make up the institutional framework and the intervening actors. Often, child and adolescent victims of severe rights violations are also perpetrators of disruptive behavior, and this activates criminal justice intervention, even though children and adolescent are not punishable. Also, many of these children and adolescent are habitual substance abusers, and their addict condition makes them "sufferers" and lenders of therapeutic measures under the aegis of the National Mental Health Law.

The purpose of this communication is to focus on the analysis of the laws that were put in place to consolidate protection networks of rights oriented towards children and adolescent. This objective will be carried out through the analysis of cases of children and adolescent that was intervened by the protection system in the City of Buenos Aires. Through cases is intended to show the progress and setbacks achieved, and the conflicts and tensions at stake in each of the levels of intervention.