Comprehensive national child protection systems: legal basis and current practice in Latin America and the Caribbean

The present document offers a comparative study of the legal child protection codes and practices in Latin America and the Caribbean, both in terms of the legal grounds for establishing a Comprehensive National Child Protection System (NCPS) and as a basis for examining current child-protection practice, institutions, functions and powers established within such legal frameworks.
The study also includes an analysis of the status of implementation and start-up of NCPSs in compliance with national mandates in four countries of Latin America and the Caribbean: Uruguay, representing the Southern Cone, Ecuador in the Andean Region, El Salvador for Central America, and Jamaica representing the Caribbean.
The wide diversity of organizational structures responsible for protecting the rights of children and adolescents in various countries justifies the conduct of this study, which is intended to give a general overview of existing systems and establish some conceptual elements to support the discussion of possible future models of a comprehensive child protection system for children and adolescents.