CLADEM – Dominican Republic
Alternative Report
Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the
Dominican Republic
Produced by:
Desiree Del Rosario, of el Centro de Estudios de Género, Berenice Pacheco Salazar and Iluminada González.
Supporting organizations:
CEDAIL
Proyecto Educativo Caminante
Servicio Jesuita a Refugiados y Migrantes
December 2007
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Application of the
Convention on the Rights of the Child
in the Dominican Republic
– Alternative Report –
The purpose of this Alternative Report is to present the current state of affairs in the Dominican Republic relating to rights of the child, with emphasis in the areas of name and nationality, education, health care and child domestic labor.
In the Dominican Republic the population between the ages of 0 and 19 is 3,743,102.
Population, 0 to 19 years of age, Dominican RepublicAge / Male / Female / Total
0 to 4 / 494,884 / 478,760 / 973,644
5 to 9 / 492,845 / 479,036 / 971,881
10 to 14 / 485,882 / 473,456 / 959,338
15 to 19 / 418,089 / 420,150 / 838,239
TOTAL: / 1,891,700 / 1,851,402 / 3,743,102
Source: VIII Censo de Población y Vivienda 2002. Rep. Dom.
In 1994 in the Dominican Republic Law 14-94 was passed, becoming the first Code considering children and adolescents, but for nine years no structure for implementation was put into place. The Code was modified in 2003 and Law 136-03 went into effect 12 months later.
After this reform, limited normative processes have been initiated to bring into effect a national structure to protect children, though the Code does not yet have national or integral support. The Supreme Court of Justice has dictated procedures in the penal code for adolescents, and through administrative capacity has regulated the behavior of judges with regard to children.
I. Right to Name and Nationality
Though official statistics establish that “78 percent of children born in the country in the past five years have been registered (82 percent in urban areas and 70 percent in rural areas)”[1], the community work of organizations such as Proyecto Educativo Caminante and el Centro de Asesoría e Investigaciones Legales (CEDAIL) reveal the conservative nature of these figures. Not only do these organizations show that higher-than-reported percentages of people are hindered from registering, they also point out the requirements and institutional obstacles that make registering difficult.
One of the initial concerns is the fact that the Dominican state does not have one agreed-upon figure regarding the real percentage of children and adolescents who find themselves without documentation. Every public institution works based on its own estimates.
We see these discrepancies reflected in a statistical study produced by SIUBEN[2]; the percentage of undocumented people living in the Dominican Republic fluctuates between 20 and 30 percent of the total population, with particular fluctuations in the population living in extreme poverty[3]. The lowest rates of birth registry are found in the poorest regions of the country. This is the case of the Southern Region, where the Enhogar census of 2005 estimates that only 62 percent of the children in the region possess documentation. In 2002 the office of the Secretaría del Estado de Educación, working through the Department of Orientation and Psychology, issued a general call to enroll children without birth certificates and carried out a census in the public schools, finding 63,595 children without birth certificates. According to SENASA, 80,000 children whose parents have birth certificates do not have certificates themselves, and 17,983 children are enrolled in schools without birth certificates. Other sources claim that more than 70,000 people have gained documentation through campaigns carried out by NGOs working with children. Through CEDAIL alone 36,000 children gained documentation in a period of three years.[4] Visión Mundial, Plan International, and other institutions also have carried out documentation projects and campaigns.
In order to register a birth or death in the Dominican Republic, it is necessary to follow the stipulations contained in Law 659 on Acts of Civil Status, in place since July 17, 1944[5]. These antiquated processes, now over 60 years old, contribute to the deficiency in the registry system. As a result, the documentation campaigns carried out by organizations of civil society have been able to resolve only part of the documentation problem, as they find families who have not been registered for generations. This situation makes it more difficult to comply with the requirements of the Junta Central Electoral and Law 659-44.
Among the principal obstacles to registering citizens, we find: the privatization of the Civil Registry, the high costs of the registry process, the inadequate time frame for declaring a birth, the judicial process required for late declaration, extra requirements for declaring children of mothers who are minors, corruption and bribes, the precarious state of state offices, the conservation of books, inadequate personnel, manual procedures and the inexistence of integrated registries for civil status.[6]
Because of these obstacles and difficulties, it was decided to propose the modification of the aforementioned Law 659-44, with the purpose of adjusting its content to the technological changes that have taken place in the world. To carry out this reform, a Commission was created, presided over by el Consejo Nacional para la Niñez y la Adolescencia (National Council for Children and Adolescents, CONANI) with the support of el Consejo Nacional para la Reforma del Estado (National Council for State Reform, CONARE). The Commission's objective was to promote the establishment of a mechanism that would permit the construction of a concrete modification proposal of the aforementioned law. Said proposal was presented to the Junta Central Electoral by CONARE. The Commission is made up of the following institutions: Consejo Nacional para la Niñez y la Adolescencia (CONANI), Secretaría de Estado de Educación (SEE), Secretaría de Estado de Salud Pública (SESPAS), Despacho de la Primera Dama de la República, Junta Central Electoral (JCE), Dirección de Niñez, Adolescencia y Familia (DINAF), Plan Dominican Republic, Visión Mundial, Centro Dominicano de Asesoría e Investigaciones Legales (CEDAIL) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), participating as a consultant. Nevertheless, this process has not moved forward, and there has not been political will to find solutions or establish norms.[7]
The recently approved Law of Amnesty in Late Declaration of Birth (Law 218-07) establishes that only in exceptional cases may children up to 12 years of age, or adolescents up to 16 years of age, receive late birth declaration. That is, those older than 16 years of age may not be taken into consideration under the law. The law remains transitory for three years, and those who wish to be declared must appear with both biological parents, a stipulation that has made declarations difficult thus far due to irresponsibility on the part of many fathers.
Article 7, CRC / Articles 4 and 5, Law 136-03
The Law 136-03, Code for the System of Protection of the Fundamental Rights of Children and Adolescents[8], recognizes the right to registry at birth, and that this right is guaranteed regardless of the condition of the mother or father. In practice, however, Dominican children face difficulties in registering their birth, difficulties that increase among rural and Dominican-Haitian populations.
Dominican authorities have declared that these difficulties are only due to institutional deficiencies.[9] Yet we find, upon analyzing the principal obstacles to the enjoyment of the right to a nationality, the great influence of racial discrimination. With the modification of Law 285 on Migration[10], after the decision in the case of Yean and Bosico[11][12], new obstacles to the civil registration of children were established. Documentation of identification is denied to children for two principal reasons: (1) the lack of documentation of their parents, and (2) for being children of immigrants, overwhelmingly of Haitian origin. These reasons are discriminatory and invalid, as the lack of documentation is not hereditary.
In the Dominican Republic there are three primary categories for cases of lack of documentation among children:
(1) Children of two or three years of age, born in the Dominican Republic of Haitian mothers who do not yet possess proof of civil registry;
(2) Declared children, one or both of whose parents are of Haitian origin. The parent or parents own a migration card or work permit, but it is currently held by the employer and is impossible to obtain a certified copy of the document. This is the case of many children and adolescents who are reaching the sixth or seventh grades of primary school;
(3) Children of Haitian mothers and Dominican fathers, where because of the nationality of the mother, the children are denied the Dominican nationality due them.
In this way, and in violation of the Constitution of the Republic, children born in the Dominican Republic of Haitian or undocumented families are stripped of their corresponding nationality[13]. A group of organizations from civil society called for the Migration Law to be examined for its constitutionality, a request that was denied by the Supreme Court of Justice[14][15].
Dr. Noemí Méndez, a lawyer who directs the Legal Department of el Centro Dominicano de Asesoría e Investigaciones Legales (CEDAIL), informed that in cases of children born to parents of Haitian origen, falsification and fraud are presumed by officials. “They retain their documents and initiate supposed investigations that delay the return of said documents, or they make sure the procedures are never completed (…) This violation prohibits the children from enjoying other rights: the schools do not want to accept them, and without their civil registry, they are also excluded from the Law of Social Security,” Méndez explained.
Article 28, CRC / Article 4, Law 136-03
The most common issues making registry of children difficult are: (1) the lack of expeditious processes that facilitate quick and effective birth registry; (2) the lack of care taken in dealing with documents of soliciting persons: documents are, in many cases, lost by state employees; (3) the high costs for obtaining notes of proof of birth[16] for children who were not born in hospitals or health centers; (4) the cases of women in post-partum recuperation who cannot appear before the corresponding officials, given the non-existence of a civil registry in every hospital and health center; and (5) the lack of a national identification card in the cases of adolescent mothers[17].
Recommendations and questions for the DominicanState
-Provide figures regarding the registry and documentation of boys and girls, specifying conditions of disability, poverty, Haitian ancestry, and children who live in bateys[18]. It is recommended that the State clearly identify the number of undocumented children, toward the end of working with a sole figure that describes the Dominican reality regarding this problem.
-What is the mechanism used to monitor institutions like CONANI regarding the situation of child documentation?
-Define policies and mechanisms that permit the expeditious documentation of children without discrimination, following the stipulations of the Constitution.
-It is necessary that the Junta Central Electoral create a new structure and procedures capable of complying with the human right to a name and nationality. We recommend the creation of structures specialized to respond to the distinct situations and needs of children, especially in the following cases: children declared within the stipulated time frame, children of adolescent mothers, children of undocumented parents.
-We recommend the signing of an agreement among the institutions that work with children and adolescents, supporting the Junta Central Electoral and the Secretaría de Estado de Educación in executing and implementing Law 218-07.
-Improve the system of registry in public sector hospitals and private clinics, toward the end of achieving an up-to-date registry of all children born within the national boundaries.
-Determine the number of children born outside of hospitals or health centers within the national boundaries, modify the institutional requirements to make registry more possible, and develop policies to monitor the problem of low documentation rates in these circumstances.
-We recommend the development of national policies that include a family component, as the state of documentation of parents is often one of the principal obstacles for the civil registry of Dominican children.
II. Right to Education
According to el INDH (2005), the Dominican Republic invests only 2.4 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in education, thus occupying the third lowest position in education spending in all of Latin America[19]. This trend continues in the period 2005-2007, when only 8 and 9 percent of the National Budget has been invested in the education sector[20], even when Law 66-97[21] establishes a minimum of 4 percent of GDP for education.
Article 28, CRC / Article 11, CEDAW / Law 66-97, regarding education /
Articles 1 and 9, clauses C and D, and Article 45, Law 136-03
An increase in school enrollment has been reported, with the exception of the secondary school level where enrollment has dropped. These trends are corroborated with figures showing that fourth and fifth grades in primary school report the highest dropout rates. Only 22 percent of Dominican children complete the eight years of primary school[22]. This figure reflects a deficient level of scholarship in the Dominican Republic.
Furthermore, despite the fact that the Dominican state claims a stable literacy rate among persons below 18 years of age, it is of considerable concern that there exist more than 850,000 persons above the age of five who have never attended school[23]. It is estimated that one child in ten never attends primary school[24] and that 65.85 percent of children between the ages of three and five find themselves outside of the educational system because of lack of classroom space, a figure that jumps to 72 percent for primary education in general[25].
In terms of time invested in education, it has been determined that the amount of instruction time in Dominican schools averages between two and three hours daily[26]. Also frequent is the suspension of classes because of truancy on the part of teachers and students. Students tend to miss class for reasons of illness (37.6 percent) and child labor (10.3 percent)[27][28].
In the Dominican Republic the rate of school enrollment is lower among boys, yet the dropout rate is higher among girls. That said, a gender analysis of the Dominican educational system does not focus only on enrollment or the Gender Parity Index, but also takes into consideration the Net Rates of Secondary School Attendance[29], in order to make visible the differences in participation among boys and girls throughout the educational system.
Recommendations and questions for the DominicanState
-Provide statistics on literacy considering sex, age, race, geographical region, children of undocumented parents (with special attention paid to cases of children or adolescents born of Haitian parents), and special mental or physical health conditions.
-Provide specific statistics regarding the numbers of children and adolescents who find it impossible to begin or finish their studies because of difficulties in documentation, child/teen pregnancy, early marriage, or child domestic labor.
-We recommend the creation of a National Plan whose objective is to increase child literacy rates and guarantee the completion of secondary education.
-We recommend an increase in educational investment, as well as the creation of a monitoring mechanism with regard to daily instruction time and educational quality from a perspective of gender and human rights of children.
-What are the mechanisms of the Secretaría de Estado de Educación that discourage girls' school desertion because of child domestic labor and/or pregnancy, as well as low grades and participation?
-We recommend the establishment of a vigilant body that monitors not only enrollment and malnutrition rates, but also centers on retention and graduation rates, taking special care to address girls' motives for school desertion. This situation has not been studied carefully in the Dominican Republic, though the World Report on Children reports that Dominican girls abandon school primarily to substitute their mothers in the care of younger siblings.
III. Right to Health
Articles 6, 24 and 32, CRC / Article 28, Law 136-03
According to ONUSIDA, 1.7 percent of the Dominican population lives with HIV/AIDS. Among these, some 3,000 children and adolescents are infected; of these, 1,116 receive state assistance[30].
In the Dominican Republic the percentage of people without access to sufficient nourishment continues to rise, currently representing 23 percent of the population, or some two million people.
The most recent figures show that 27 percent of Dominican children are malnourished[31]. Currently 5 percent of children below the age of five are malnourished, and almost one in every hundred is classified as severly malnourished[32]. The situation is worse for children who live in the country's bateys, where 11.5 percent of children below the age of five suffer chronic malnutrition[33].
The lack of public policy regarding the problem of malnutrition permits that 8 percent of Dominican children suffer from mental and developmental problems related to lack of proper nutrition. Malnutrition also continues to be one of the principal causes of infant mortality[34].
Articles 6, 24 and 32 of the CRC
According to official figures, infant mortality has been estimated at 30 deaths before age one for every thousand live births. The rate of mortality for children below the age of five reaches 35 for every thousand live births over the past five years[35].
It is concerning to discover that among the principal causes of mortality among children between the ages of one and four are diarrhea, gastroenteritis, severe malnutrition and pneumonia[36]; all easily preventible illnesses or conditions.
Recommendations and questions for the DominicanState
-Provide specific figures on maternal mortality, especially for cases of child/teen pregnancy, and provide figures on deaths related to abortions performed in unsafe conditions.
-What measures has the state taken to guarantee children's rights in the context of the new Law of Social Security that revokes new mothers' rights to a post-partum leave of absence from their employment?
-What measures is the state developing with regard to child malnutrition? Does the school breakfast fulfill children's nutritional needs to a satisfactory degree?
-What state mechanisms are in place to respond to the scarcity and poor quality of water for human consumption, as a step in guaranteeing the health of children and their families?
IV. Right to Sexual Health and Reproductive Health