La construcción del conocimiento como Política Pública. : Consolidación de un sistema de información para la prevención y erradicación del trabajo infantil y la protección del trabajo adolescente

Abstract

The Observatory of Child and Adolescent Labor (OTIA) depends on the Undersecretary of Planning, Studies and Statistics of the Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Security of the Nation (MTEySS) and its main purpose is to consolidate an information system, contributing to the prevention and eradication of child labor within the framework of the comprehensive protection of children's rights. The OTIA information system, built fundamentally on the production of specific surveys with broad population coverage and the development of qualitative studies that address the local and/or sectoral manifestations of the problem, provides useful data for diagnosis, design, and implementation. of public policies.

The implementation of a comprehensive information system is based on the need to understand a complex and multidimensional social problem such as child labor. It should be noted that certain activities that refer to child labor are not seen as such by those who carry them out, or by their social environment, and are naturalized and/or invisible or hidden. For this reason, the production of accurate, exhaustive and trustworthy information must be approached from the design of consistent, reliable and heterogeneous instruments to capture a problem of such characteristics.

The objective of this work is to share the experience of the Observatory in relation to the strategies and approaches involved in the generation of knowledge for the capture and visibility of the phenomenon and its multiple manifestations. In this sense, emphasis will be placed on three lines of work developed from or with the participation of OTIA for the study of the problem: 1) the Survey of Activities of Boys, Girls and Adolescents (EANNA) 2016/2017, 2) the Model of Identification of the Risk of Child and Adolescent Labor (MIRTI) and 3) a qualitative study on the activities of children, adolescents and young people residing in rural areas in the context of social, preventive and compulsory isolation. Likewise, reference will also be made to the development of local action-research studies and technical assistance, as well as participation in the evaluation of actions, programs and policies for the prevention and/or eradication of child labor, all activities provided by the Observatory.