Since the entry into force of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in Spain, which incorporates the conception of the child as a subject of rights, creative and participatory, capable of modifying and influencing their environment, conditions have been promoted to make effective the participation of children and adolescents, hereinafter NNA, in social life in all its dimensions. Generally speaking, the so-called "child participation", as the right of the NNA to be heard and a cross-cutting principle of the CRC, is perhaps the right with the greatest difficulty for understanding from the adult world, and thus for its effective application, sometimes complicated by the complex articulation it entails, considering the living conditions and age and/or maturity of an NNA.
The rights of children and adolescents, and specifically, the right to effective participation of children and adolescents as full-fledged citizens, is a priority for the Government of Spain. The demand, and prior work to create a consultative participation body at the state level, has existed for some time in line with:
- General Comment No. 12 of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child: The right of the child to be heard (2009)
- Observations and recommendations of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child to Spain (2018).
In the latest recommendations (March 2018), made by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, they again included the right of the child to be heard, insisting that the promotion of due respect for the opinions of the NNA, at any age, in the family, in school, in society in general and in all administrative and judicial proceedings concerning them is continued. - European guidelines (both from European Union strategies and from the Council of Europe) aimed at empowering children to exercise active citizenship as full-fledged members of democratic societies.
In light of the aforementioned international instruments, the creation of a State Council for the Participation of Children and Adolescents was promoted in the seventeenth final provision of the Organic Law 8/2021 on comprehensive protection of children and adolescents against violence, which was approved on June 4, 2021. This mandate was materialized through Order DSA/1009/2021, of September 22, 2021, for the creation of the CEPIA.
Automatically translated with OpenAI from Spanish