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The Good Practices Guide for the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Children on the Move in the Americas presents good practices that contribute to the comprehensive development, well-being, and protection of the rights of children and adolescents on the move. The Guide showcases 11 experiences in a wide range of areas, such as social protection, education, health, migration personnel training and awareness, measures against trafficking and smuggling, protection of unaccompanied children and family reunification, information and data collection, and solutions to the lack of documentation, among others. Each good practice case addresses the context of implementation, challenges, lessons learned, and recommendations for replication in different contexts.
This Guide intends to serve as inspiration to translate international and inter-American child protection frameworks into concrete actions. Developing legal frameworks at the international and inter-American levels represented significant legal milestones in protecting children and adolescents. However, the deficit between the standards and the materialization of the texts into meaningful actions and public policies that consider the specific needs and best interests of children has reflected little of the magnitude and urgency of the phenomenon. The complexity of the challenge should not be a reason for discouragement or inaction. The construction of innovative systems for protecting and promoting children and adolescents on the move is highly dependent on our ability to overcome — in political, social, and economic pacts — the adult-centric vision and the security approach to migratory flows.
The Guide is a collaboration between the Inter-American Dialogue’s Education Program and the Organization of American States’ (OAS) Department of Social Inclusion. The Guide builds on the efforts of the Working Group for Migrant Children, convened by the Inter-American Dialogue since 2022, and on the commitments of the Declaration for the Protection and Integration of Migrant and Refugee Children and Adolescents in the Americas, adopted during the 53rd General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) in 2023.
