Building the Child Protection System in Argentina

CARLA VILLALTA; LLOBET, VALERIA

International Handbook of Child Protection Systems

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Año: 2023; p. 587 - 607

Argentina was one of the first Latin American countries to develop a strong Welfare State in the region; however, the nation did not perform nearly as well in the area of child protection issues. While the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was included in the Constitution during the 1994 reform, the principles of children?s rights did not inform federal laws until 2005 when an extensive body of laws on children?s rights, comprised of education, health and special protection. During the decade of the 1990s, the institutionalization of children?s rights and the CRC, in the context of a neoliberal state and the dominance of the Washington Consensus, marked the conjunction of children?s rights and the transformation of the Welfare State. Deemed a paradoxical process, the expansion of rights occurred parallel to the retraction of citizenship and welfare protection and the rise of poverty (Llobet 2009a, Villalta 2010a). In the 2000s, the financial crisis of 1999-2002 marked the end of the neoliberal wave and the beginning of a left-wing era?the so called Pink Wave?due to the government?s support for human rights and emphasis on inequality. A change in the role of State institutions and the development of policies and laws in favor of human rights strongly marked the decade. Children were at the center of political discourse as the legitimate subject of rights and protection policies. Changes in education, social protection, and family laws were framed by rights focused on children?s interests and needs.In 2015, the rise of an openly right-wing government marked the end of the consensus of children?s rights, and new voices took control of the stage. The new government shifted the main focus of the debate to the age of full penal prosecution. This coincided with a criminal characterization of political engagement by children and youth, while implementing budget cuts that put pressure on the provision of social rights. The social protection system, previously based on ideas of social and economic rights, has slowly moved into a more defined model of individual activation. Moreover, the new political actors in power are contesting human rights discourses as part of a past from which the new policy focus needs to move away. Children?s and human rights activists strategically use discourses and meanings to delegitimize these changes, but the very meanings and scope of rights seem to be currently under siege; the institutions and policies that support these ideas are being eliminated and transformed. In this chapter, we will focus on the process of local reception and institutionalization of children?s rights discourse, the local debates and disputes over the meaning and extension of those rights, and the local actors that have been active in these disputes. The struggles over the meaning of childhood and rights have not only contributed to the vernacularization of human rights (Merry 2006), but have taken part in the re-drawing of the social place and meaning of childhood, parenthood and parental responsibilities and entitlements, as well as the State?s obligations and responsibilities. Therefore, the chapter will also discuss the architecture of rights (Haney 2002), which are comprised of the institutions and policies of child protection and acknowledge the challenges of realizing children?s rights in a socio-political context of budget constraints and a ?minimal-state?.