30 years of the ECA: Nina Rodrigues can't be right

Abstract

The Statute of the Child and Adolescent then came into being in 1990, with the promise of making the constitutional dictates a reality, saying "no" to indifference, to juvenileism, to disregard, to hypocrisy, to extermination. "Minors", we insist, do not exist; there are only children, adolescents and young people, regardless of gender, colour or social class. This is a "no" imbued with dreams, which embodies the constitutional and international principle of integral protection, enshrines individual rights in opposition to punitive power, guarantees social rights, protects mothers and families and reorganises child and youth care. A sensitive "no", but no less firm for that.