The policy will define childhood as people from birth to 18 years of age and youth from 18 to 30 years of age.
and as youth, from 18 to 30 years of age. Photo: Abel Padrón Padilla

Havana, July 20 (RHC)-- Cuban deputies approved Thursday the Policy of Integral Attention to Children, Adolescents and Youths, aimed at promoting the development of these groups, respect for their rights and their social inclusion with equity.

On the opening day of the First Ordinary Session of the National Assembly of People's Power (ANPP) in its 10th Legislature, the members of that body discussed and endorsed the initiative, which transversalizes the rights of Cuban children, adolescents and youths, and conceives them as agents of social and cultural transformation.

Arelys Santana, president of the ANPP's Commission on Attention to Youth, Children and Women's Equal Rights, said that the initiative seeks to articulate the factors involved in the care and protection of these people at all stages of their lives.

The initiative, which had an intersectorial and multidisciplinary elaboration in which the civil society actively participated, contains a systematization of the background, the current and demographic situation, the potentialities, and an exhaustive description of the general and specific problems related to these groups.

Santana expressed that the implementation requires integral actions aimed at ensuring that the social, human and material conditions exist in the environments where they develop to guarantee the promotion and empowerment of their full development.

For his part, Deputy Prime Minister Jorge Luis Perdomo specified that the policy comprises 120 actions, of which 92 correspond to the first stage of its implementation, from 2023 to 2025, and the rest to the period from 2026 to 2030.

He added that it is an open proposal, which will continue to grow, and that it is articulated with the Policy for Attention to Demographic Dynamics, the National Economic and Social Development Plan, the Program for the Advancement of Women, and the Program to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination, among other initiatives.

Perdomo said that with the approval of this policy, the basis for a bill to replace the current Children and Youth Code, in force since 1978, will be ready.

In turn, Deputy José Carlos Cruz, from the central province of Ciego de Avila, considered that this proposal is strategic for the country, because it ensures the continuity of the revolutionary process, and ratifies the will of the State to work for the benefit of children, adolescents and young people, while taking into account criteria issued by them.

Meanwhile, young legislator Karla Santana, from Havana, stressed that the document has the virtue of thinking of a better future for her and her peers, and also provides the tools to achieve that future.