CRC/C/BOL/CO/4
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(b)
The adoption of new legislation such as the law on DNA testing in criminal cases
against children, the law for search and registration procedures for lost children as
well as regulations concerning HIV and Breastfeeding;
(c)
The enactment as law of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples; and
(d)
The creation of the National Council for Childhood and Adolescence, as well as
the Commissions for Childhood and Adolescence both at departmental and
municipal levels.
4.
The Committee further welcomes the ratification by the State party of the Convention for
the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance in 2008 and the Optional Protocol to
the Convention against Torture in 2006.
C. Main areas of concern and recommendations
1. General measures of implementation
(arts. 4, 42 and 44, paragraph 6 of the Convention)
The Committee’s previous recommendations
5.
The Committee notes that several concerns and recommendations made upon the
consideration of the State party’s third periodic report have been addressed, but regrets that many
others have been insufficiently or only partly addressed.
6.
The Committee urges the State party to take all necessary measures to address those
recommendations from the concluding observations on the third periodic report
(CRC/C/15/Add.256) that have not yet been implemented or sufficiently implemented,
notably those related to the adoption of a national plan of action for children, the low and
unequal legal minimum ages for contracting marriage, corporal punishment, children
without parental care, police brutality, juvenile justice and children deprived of their
liberty together with adults, and to provide adequate implementation and follow-up to the
recommendations contained in the present concluding observations on the fourth periodic
report.
Legislation
7.
The Committee welcomes the new Constitution which includes a section on child rights.
However, it regrets that national legislation is not in conformity with the Convention in certain
areas, for instance the Child Code (Codigo del Niño, Niña y Adolescente) and civil and penal
laws concerning the prohibition of corporal punishment, raising the minimum age for marriage
and bringing the alternative care of children and juvenile justice system into conformity with the
international standards. The Committee also notes difficulties with the dual legal system and
certain incompatibilities between positive law and the indigenous customary law.