LOPNA: 24 years guaranteeing the protection of children and adolescents

On April 1, 2001, Commander Hugo Chávez enacted the Organic Law for the Protection of Children and Adolescents (LOPNA), a regulation that protects the fundamental rights of children in Venezuela.

This Act regulates everything related to the duties and responsibilities proper to the care and protection of children and adolescents in our country and is based on the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, of November 20, 1989, whose objective was to transform needs into rights.

On August 29, 1990, the Law Approving the Convention on the Rights of the Child was enacted in Venezuela to provide social and legal protection to children and adolescents.

In 2007, the law was amended with the purpose of reformulating the institutional structure for the protection of children and adolescents.

The reform grants new rights to children, such as good treatment, and introduces, for the first time, the word love in a legal text.

The LOPNA also highlights the difference between a boy, a girl and an adolescent: A boy or a girl is any person under 12 years of age. Adolescent is any person between the ages of 12 and 18, specific derivative conditions that determine the assignment of obligations.

Among the enshrined guarantees are the rights to life, to health, to social security, to protection in cases of armed conflict, to education, to access to information, to preserve their identity, to name and nationality, not to be separated from their parents, to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, to recreation and culture, to protection and security, to free participation and development.

It should be noted that every right embodied in the law involves a duty. Among those that children and adolescents must comply with, are: Respect and obey their parents, representatives or guardians, as long as their orders do not violate their rights and guarantees or contravene the legal system; respect the rights and guarantees of others; fulfill their obligations in matters of education; honor the Homeland and its symbols; respect the diversity of conscience, thought, religion and culture; conserve the environment.

The LOPNA also promotes the education of indigenous children and adolescents and obliges the State to guarantee to all indigenous children and adolescents education regimes, plans and programs that promote respect and conservation of their own cultural life, their language and access to knowledge generated by their own group or culture.

Mazo News Team