TABLE OF THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD – 1927

On June 9, 1927, during the inauguration of the Inter-American Children's Institute, this declaration on the Rights of the Child was presented: "I submit, for the consideration of all men of good will and healthy heart, this declaration on the Rights of the Child, a Table of Rights in whose observance lies the secret of the greatness and glory of nations and peoples." (Extract from the speech by the Minister of Public Education, Mr. Enrique Rodríguez Fabregat, on June 9, 1927.) Right to Life. The sum of all rights, for the sole reason of having been born. The right to a home to live in; to maternal care; to obligatory paternal recognition with all of the responsibilities of paternity; and to the State overseeing physiological development and prosperity. Right to Education. First, to attend Kindergarten. Second, to attend elementary school. The abolition of the system of city schools. The abolition of verbalist, book-oriented teaching. The reintegration of children into nature, through a school of activities, work, joy – School Parks – to achieve reactions in body and spirit – health, intelligence and emotion – and prepare children to be the builders of their own destiny and of social greatness. Right to Specialized Education. Health schools, outside, in forests and fields, schools outside under the sun, for the abnormal, the deficient, the sick, and the weak. Right to Maintain and Develop Personality. The study of vocations, systems of spiritual orientation without artifice, that may only be achieved in School Parks, in the return to nature, by the reaction of the intimate to life outside. The recognition, in practice of education systems, of the right to be a child, to live and feel as a child, free from the cold artificiality of the school-cloister and from the pedagogical dogma that informs it. Right to Complete Nutrition. The mother's right to raise her child. State security for mothers without resources. Milk services. The installation of school snack programs. The installation of School-Cafeterias for minors who work before this table of Rights has been comprehensively met. Right to Full Economic Assistance. This right signifies parents' obligation - or, in their absence, the State's obligation – to ensure the child an economic situation without hardship. The right to housing, clothing, and to all opportunities for well-being that man's work puts at the service of world progress. Right to Land. Land to inhabit. The recognition of children's right to occupy their place in the world, for the sole fact of having been born. Land to work, put at the disposal of the School Parks, for the development of their energies, their vital impulse, their restlessness, and their faculties of observation, so that they may learn for themselves in the vast panorama of the universe and understand that life is an immutable law of solidarity in the effort of creation. Right to Social Consideration. All for the child, the abolition of the legal distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children. The child is simply a child. Children have a right to their parents. The transformation of orphanages and reformatories, where the "Pavilion" system annuls personality, into family colonies for education and work, organized in small social nuclei confined to father and mother who include in their affection for their children, a small group of children without a home. Right to Joy. The absolute recognition of this right in family life without economic hardship, in the active school in nature, in education without artifice, at a table where there is bread, in a home where there is a hearth. The right to air and light, to land that is cultivated, fire that warms and water that purifies. The right to be a child to be a man, to form, with healthy bodies and clean souls, the builders of liberty, the architects of the world's conscience. The Sum of these Rights of the Child is the Integral Right: The Right to Life. On its recognition and observance, depends the greatness of peoples. On health and joy, and on the unhampered education of children for culture, work, liberty and cooperation, rest the values of man's destiny in a new chapter of history. Picture of the inauguration of the Inter-American Children's Institute- 1927