Elaborado por el CLADEM Brasil (Versión en Inglés). 2004
A new paradigm was introduced to Brazilian legal culture by means of the 1988 Federal Constitution, the Children’s and Adolescents’ Statute (Law 8,069/90) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Brazil on September 24, 1990. This paradigm was inspired by the conception of children and adolescents[2] as true subjects of rights, in a peculiar condition of development. Brazilian Law may be divided into two phases, before and
after 1988. The Brazilian Constitution of 1988 constitutes a legal watershed in terms of the democratic transition and of the institutionalization of human rights in the country.
However, there persists in Brazil an adult-centric culture that perceives life and the world through an adult lens. There remains the culture of ‘minorization’, in which children and adolescents are seen as minor and inferior in terms of rights and dignity.