Monitoring and Follow-Up Workshop for the Situation of Child Rights in Guatemala

Monitoring and Follow-Up Workshop for the Situation of s in Guatemala

A workshop entitled Making Visible in order to Guarantee was carried out in the city of Guatemala on 27 July, in order to advance towards the implementation of the rights monitoring system on which the IIN, together with senior authorities of the State of Guatemala, has been working for 18 months.

On this occasion, the activity was jointly organized by the IIN, the Social Welfare Secretariat (SBS, in Spanish) and the National Children´s Commission (CNNA, in Spanish). This event is part of the project for the Protection and Promotion of Children´s Rights in the Inter-American System, implemented by the IIN together with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), which includes a national plan for the comprehensive care of early childhood, as well as devising and setting up a monitoring system based on a rights-based perspective, amongst other output.

The workshop was attended by Mrs. Silvia Palolo, the Secretary for Social Welfare, Mrs. Ingrid Orantes, President of the National Children´s Commission, Mr. Byron Alvarado, the Executive Secretary, Mr. Rubén Chavén, the National Coordinator for the IIN-CIDA project, and UNICEF technicians.

During the meeting, a description was given of the development of the proposal, in which representatives of the Ministries of Health, Education and Food Security, and of the General Planning Secretariat and the National Registry of Persons participated, under the coordination of the Social Welfare Secretariat. In addition, it was agreed that responsibility regarding the conditions in which information would be handled and processed would be assumed by the CNNA, in accordance with the legal framework which regulates its operations and mission, and with the support of the SBS.

Amongst the content discussed in the workshop was the importance of having a monitoring system which includes a rights-based perspective, shines a light on inequity and makes information available to the different social actors. This system will be operated by means of the DEVINFO platform and in the next few weeks, on the basis of an agreement reached between the IIN and UNICEF, this organization´s technicians will train the personnel responsible for using the platform.

Launching the monitoring system and following it up will represent a significant step for Guatemala, since it will enable organizations and citizens to gain access to information regarding the situation of children and the investment and efforts made by the State with the purpose of reducing the gap between rights and facts. It should be mentioned that launching this system had been indicated by the Committee on the Rights of the Child as one of the priorities in terms of putting into practice the mandates of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).