Translated by Chris Brown
The Municipal Traffic Light for the Rights of Children, devised by ODISEA AC [Organization for Social Development and Education for All] with data from INEGI (The National Institute of Statistics and Geography) and CONEVAL (The National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy), reveals the inequities that children and adolescents suffer from in 14 states of the country.
In the country, half of minors, from newborns to 17 years of age, don’t have access to health care, whereas in 260 municipalities--of the 483 which will have local elections next month--more than half of them live in extreme poverty, reveals the Municipal Traffic Light for the Rights of Children.
The document, developed by ODISEA AC, reflects the situation faced by minors in 14 states, in light of elections this coming July, in order to highlight the inequality gaps that limit the guarantee of minors’ rights to survival, development, protection and social participation.
Through 27 indicators organized into those four rights groups, the Municipal Traffic Light... shows the great inequalities that children suffer in our country.
The data focuses on the states of Aguascalientes, Baja California, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Durango, Hidalgo, Oaxaca, Puebla, Quintana Roo, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, Tlaxcala, Veracruz and Zacatecas.
“The elections of 441 state legislators, 1,347 local council seats, and a governor (in those states) are a good opportunity to highlight the inequality gaps that limit the guarantee of rights for thousands of children in every one of the municipalities and to contribute to the public debate, as well as to the work of organizations interested in the subject and in the importance of an agenda for children that guides solutions from a local level”, recounted Luis Barquera, president of ODISEA AC.The figures reflect that, in those states, 60% of boys and girls with disabilities between the ages of 3 and 17 don’t have access to education. In the municipality of Santa María Texcatitlán, Oaxaca, 4 out of every 100 teens from ages 15 to 17 that don’t attend school didn't even finish education through the ninth grade, while in 5 municipalities of the state, all adolescents are lagging behind in their education.
Greater levels of the population age 15-17 that neither attend school nor have completed ninth grade education are concentrated in Hidalgo, Quintana Roo and Veracruz.
In Tepemaxalco, Puebla, the infant mortality rate rose to 85 per 100 thousand live births in 2011, the region in which a child is 20 times more likely to die before reaching 1 year of age than in Jopala or Puebla. Being born in Guadalupe, Chihuahua carries 70 times more risk of dying before your fifth birthday than if one is born in San Juan de Sabinas, Coahuila.
In 10 municipalities the lack of drainage systems isn’t affecting minors; however, this lack affects all those who reside in Santiago Nundiche, Oaxaca, which is ranked last in the country.
The President of CONAPRED (the National Council to Prevent Discrimination), Ricardo Bucio, said that this document, which contains data from INEGI and CONEVAL is
“a very valuable tool for thinking about public policy and for creating a general law for the rights of boys, girls, and adolescents, and a comprehensive system of protection of those rights.”This system, he said, is not a matter that corresponds to any one government agency, but instead there are obligations for each branch and entity of the three levels of government.
Erika Strand, head of social policy of UNICEF-Mexico, and Juan Martín Pérez, executive director of Redim (the Network for the Rights of Children in Mexico) made an appeal to the Congress of the Union to enact the aforementioned law and to create the comprehensive system of protection for the rights of children. Spanish original