LATIN AMERICAN MOVEMENT

OF WORKING CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS

The continental organization MOLACNATS is made up of national Movements of Working Children and Adolescents of several Latin American countries. In MOLACNATS, the meetings are run by children; they also decide what strategies the Movement should follow and what actions it should take.

In the decision-making bodies there aren’t any adults; they just accompany the children, playing an educational role.

The local groups of each movement struggle to attain better services and assistance to improve the living conditions of working children. Although on the one hand, survival is all too often the primary objective, children gradually understand than they sometimes need more than a meal or a place to sleep.: They also need to become aware of their own rights, they need their status as workers to be acknowledged, and they need to identify themselves as a group.

Children thus become aware of the importance of living in dignity and respecting themselves. They organise demonstrations for such fundamental needs, and actions to condemn abuses and to claim their rights. Within a few years, such actions have yielded important results: the Peruvian Governement has granted them an advisory role during the ratification of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.

MOLACNATS has 3 main focuses of action that are put into effect through its local groups :

1. Participation in the protection and promotion of child rights, and the rights of Working Children in particular. To do this, children create small organizations both where they work and in the communities in which they live, in order to interact with society. The local and national networks of working children and adolescents come together and organize themselves into Movements, whose aim is to raise public awareness through a series of initiatives;

2. Development of programmes tailored to local needs and to the experiences of Working Children and Adolescents: schools for WC, social and vocational training projects;

3. A third important objective is the development of public policies for children, through the contribution of the children’s Movements themselves. It has three main focuses:

a) To condemn the total lack of public policies and protection measures devoted to children and adolescents;

b) To condemn the implementation of governmental policies against the Working Children, as such approaches violate the underlying principle of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as happened in , and Columbia;

c) To actively participation in the development of policies for the protection of Working Children and Adolescents, as is the case in .

Throughout Latin America, MOLACNATs is composed of the following Movements:

Member of the Latin American Organization:

ONATS COL: Columbia

CORENATs: Venezuela

MOCHINATs: Chile

MNNATSOP: Peru

CONNATs: Paraguay

UNATSBO: Bolivia

Contact Countries:

Guatemala, Argentina, Mexico, Nicaragua and El Salvador

Movements' web sites

ONAT's COL
Organización de Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes Trabajadores de Colombia (Working Children and Adolescents Organization in Colombia)

www.onatscol.org

MNNATSOP

Movimiento nacional de Nats organizados del Peru (National Movement of organized working children in Peru)

www.mnnatsop.org

IFEJANT
Instituto de Formación para Educadores de Jóvenes, Adolescentes y Niños Trabajadores de América Latina y el Caribe (Educational Institute for Adult Educators working with Working Youth, Children and Adolescents in Latin America and Caribbean)

www.ifejants.org

MANTHOC
Movimiento de Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes Trabajadores Hijos de Obreros Cristianos, Lima (Perù), (Working Children and Adolescents Movement in Lima, Peru)

www.manthocperu.org

CONATAR
Colaboradores por los NAT's Argentinos (Working Children and Adolescents Adult Collaborators in Argentina)

www.conatar.com.ar

MANITRAS
Manitos Trabajadoras Solidarias www.cordobatech.com.ar/manitras

NATRAS
Ninos y adolescentes trabajadores de Centroamerica (Working Children and Adolescents in Central America)

http://natras.kraetzae.de/index.htm