Street Children’s Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child: A Study of Acceptance and Observance in Mexico and Ecuador

Summary

This paper offers a first template for assessing performance by national governments
in guaranteeing disadvantaged groups of youngsters access to their rights, as enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Street children, who are among the most severely disadvantaged children of any society, are the particular focus of this paper. The 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) constitutes a bold new approach to children’s rights, requiring governments to assume new commitments to helping street children.

Latin  America has a particularly strong history of work with street children, spanning at least 30 years, but governments have not managed to guarantee access by street children to their basic human rights. This paper explores CRC adherence with respect to street children in two Latin American countries – Mexico, a fairly affluent country and Ecuador, a relatively poor one. I divide my exploration of each country’s observance of the CRC into the broad fields of legislation, implementation and enforcement, and assess governmental progress in the decade since their ratification of the Convention.