Vulneration of human rights in private adolescents of freedom in the Integral Education Center of Itauguá in the year 2015

Abstract

The adolescent population deprived of liberty constitutes up to this day a sector systematically violated by who should be the main guarantor of their rights, the Paraguayan State. They are mostly deprived of their liberty without having gone through a fair trial and according to their stage of life. This is due to the lack of a Juvenile Criminal Justice System in Paraguay, which is still in debt with this population historically postponed by not establishing a specific regime for its treatment, in addition to the lack of public policies that offer alternatives to deprivation of liberty. Thus, before entering educational centers where they will be kept in custody, adolescents are already victims of the violation of their rights by not respecting the priority of the application of the measures established in the Book V of Law No. 1,680 of the Code of Childhood and Adolescence which stipulates deprivation of liberty as the ultimate measure to be applied only when socio-educational and corrective measures have failed. This means that juvenile detention centers are increasingly overcrowded and even have detainees who have not been found guilty of any crimes. In this sense, the realization of this investigation revealed that 26 years after the International Convention on the Human Rights of the Child, there is still no significant progress regarding adolescents deprived of their liberty, since the ratification is only visible in the document whereas in practice the constant is the indolence of the State before this problem. The purpose of this study was to verify the implementation of the “United Nations Rules for Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty” inside one of the largest detention centers for male adolescents in the country, the Integral Educational Center of Itaugua (IEC). Also, this approach aims to publicly show the conditions of detention in which the adolescents are to generate a response. This research dedicated to survey concise data of a great discrepancy between what is established in the UN Rules and the institutional practice of the IEC. Finally, these data are not only a wakeup call for society in general but also they invite us to assume our adult responsibility as defenders of the Rights of Children and Adolescents.