Secretary for the Rights of Children and Adolescents is dismissed

The lawyer and human rights activist Ariel de Castro Alves was exonerated from the position of national secretary for the Rights of Children and Adolescents. The waiver was published in the Official Gazette (DOU) this Thursday (4). According to the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship, Castro’s dismissal is due to a “necessary administrative adjustment based on the portfolio’s objectives and strategies”. The post will be occupied on an interim basis by the ministry’s current director of Child and Adolescent Protection, psychologist Maria Luiza Moura Oliveira. A specialist in Human Rights and Public Security Policies, Castro, 46, has headed the secretariat since last January 23, during which, among other things, he participated in federal efforts in response to the health crisis in the Yanomami Indigenous Land. During part of this period, he also chaired the National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents (Conanda), having been elected by the other councilors. Conanda Responsible for, among other things, drawing up and supervising compliance with the general norms of the national policy for the care of children’s rights and promoting public campaigns of interest to the segment, Conanda became the object of a controversial dispute during the former president’s government Jair Bolsonaro, who right at the beginning of his term, in 2019, implemented measures changing the composition and functioning of this and other public policy management councils, even extinguishing the National Council for Food Security (Consea). In the case of Conanda, the first government measures of the Bolsonaro administration resulted in the extinction of technical positions and the blocking of financial resources – which caused the postponement of the first meeting that the body was supposed to hold, in February 2019, and also of the 11th National Conference of the Rights of Children and Adolescents. Scheduled for October 2019 (before the start of the covid-19 pandemic), the conference only took place in November 2020, virtually. In September 2019, a presidential decree reduced the number of representatives of the federal government and social entities on the collegiate from 56 to 36. In a note sent to the press, Ariel listed some of her team’s accomplishments during her time at the head of the secretariat. Among them, the restructuring, in April, of Conanda, which now has 30 full councilors and an equal number of alternate members, half of whom are appointed by civil society, half representing federal government bodies. The former secretary also listed some of the main initiatives approved within the scope of the national secretariat, such as the creation of a specific coordination to combat child labor; the restructuring of the Program for the Protection of Children and Adolescents Threatened with Death (PPCAM); support and guidance to municipalities to hold elections for guardianship councilors in October of this year and the promotion of public utility campaigns and identification of vulnerable children. To Agência Brasil, Castro said that, among the main challenges for his successor, are the secretariat’s budget recovery; the maintenance of intersectoral action with other ministries and the continuity of the work plans and diagnoses already approved by Conanda.

Agência Brasil