On June 2, Andrea Urbas, Director of Chicos.net, and Candelaria Kelly, Coordinator of the Research Commission of the Collective for the Rights of Children and Adolescents, participated in a briefing organised by the Committee on Families, Children, and Youth of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies.
The meeting brought together child rights experts, representatives from civil society organisations, and national legislators to discuss, exchange perspectives, and assess the current situation regarding the right of children and adolescents (C&A) to a life free from violence in Argentina.
During the meeting, participants addressed the multiple violations of children and adolescents’ right to a life free from violence in various settings: schools, digital spaces, alternative care facilities, and access to justice.
Andrea Urbas emphasised the urgent need to enact a comprehensive digital protection law that holds technology companies accountable for the environments they provide to children and adolescents, illustrating with concrete examples the current risks that girls and boys face online. She also spoke about the importance of addressing situations involving issues of digital coexistence, gender-based violence such as non-consensual content, and the creation of AI-generated deepfakes, for which public prevention policies, mental health and support services, and comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) in schools must be strengthened.
In her remarks, Candelaria Kelly presented the findings of the Argentina Country Report – Sin miedo en la escuela: A National Assessment of Violence in Educational Settings – which was shared during the meeting as a key input for the drafting of legislative proposals. The report was developed as part of a regional initiative led by the Latin American Hub of the Coalition for Good Schools and reflects a broader effort to generate evidence and strengthen advocacy for safer educational environments across the region.
The report, which included the voices of nearly 200 children and adolescents, highlighted the absence of interdisciplinary teams in most of the country’s schools, the limited participation of children and adolescents in policies that affect them, a lack of awareness regarding existing support mechanisms, and difficulties in coordination among actors within the Comprehensive Protection System. Based on this evidence, it proposed criteria to guide the draft legislation: understanding violence as a structural problem; ensuring the meaningful participation of children and adolescents in policy design; and moving toward a shared responsibility with a concrete framework that involves schools, the health system, families, local organizations, and technology companies themselves.
The legislators in attendance agreed on the need to move forward with legislation on these issues and announced that they would convene a session the following week to begin working on bills aimed at protecting children and adolescents in digital environments.
The full video recording of the briefing session is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSldL6QcgVk
No Fear at School: Country Reports from Latin America
https://coalitionforgoodschools.org/sin-miedo-en-la-escuela/
Based on updates from Andrea Urbas (LATAM Hub member) and Candelaria Kelly from chicos.net, and translated into English by Joshua Aguilar, Technical Assistant for Content and Incident Management at Aulas En Paz.