76^th MEETING OF THE DIRECTING COUNCIL OF THE
INTER-AMERICAN CHILDREN'S INSTITUTE

May 9-11, 2001
Montevideo, Uruguay

THE DIRECTING COUNCIL,

WHEREAS:

The Member States of the Organization of American States (OAS) are also members of the United Nations System, and this worldwide organization has produced various international norms pertaining to children;

The Governments of the Americas have developed national regulations that comply with the principles of this international standard;

The Inter-American system of regulations and protection of human beings takes up the principles of international standards on working children and seeks the Member States' observance of these instruments;

The Inter-American Children's Institute, as a specialized organization of the OAS on child and family affairs, has the objective of encouraging processes of legislative harmonization with universally accepted principles;

There is an urgent need to determine prototype rules in key sectors pertaining to children's rights, such as the ones shown in Articles 23, 32, 33 and 34 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to upgrade OAS Member States' compliance with these standards;

BEARING IN MIND THAT:

The purpose of this model regulation is to promote national legislation that is in full accordance with the principles of international child protection standards, and to establish national child care policies;

RESOLVES TO:

1. To support the efforts made by the Office of the IACI's Director General to prepare prototype regulations in the relevant areas pertaining to children's rights, as a mechanism for meeting the minimum universal principles in the Inter-American System.
   
2. To recommend that the OAS Member States consider adopting the inter-American prototype regulations created by the IACI and observe them fully, through national processes of legislative harmonization and definition of public State social policies on the subject.