This article is a summary excerpt of a paper written for DAWN by Lourdes Bascary. It is available in English and Spanish on the DAWN website.

The challenge of complying with the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development, adopted at the First Regional Conference on Population and Development held in August 2013 in Uruguay, is huge. It involves the need to create spaces for agreements and coordinated efforts between all state actors involved and, of course, feminist organizations and social movements that supported it and witnessed its birth with great hope. It becomes strategic to make efforts to use the Operational Guide1 for implementation and follow-up of the Montevideo Consensus on population and development in order to improve the conditions for its effective compliance.

The reality of our region shows that changes in political administrations of our countries or governments often impact, although they should not, the human rights achievements that might have occurred during the previous administration. Therefore, strengthening the policies required to guarantee the rights that result in an adequate level of development and growth, with good institutional frameworks and processes of accountability, is a priority.

Consider how compliance with the Consensus is achieved in each reality and how applicable the goals and indicators presented in the Implementation Guide are to these institutional structures and contexts.

The first step is to identify the concepts that are considered relevant to the general scheme concerning the Montevideo Consensus (MC) and its monitoring and evaluation process relate to the most important aspects, that is, the institutional framework. Some central concepts of this institutional framework are: public policies with a human rights based approach.

The next step is to define the relevance of the indicators for a process that refers to the functioning of the state in the establishment of public policies (Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, called Protocol of San Salvador). Perform an analysis of its relevance to examine the state of progress in a particular case study for this case: Tucuman, a province of Argentina, a federal state. Specifically, aim at doing the exercise of trying to analyze what institutional capacities should be generated to achieve that goal and test how to measure progress.

For example, with Priority Action (PA) 11: “Ensure the effective implementation from early childhood of comprehensive sexuality education programmes, recognizing the emotional dimension of human relationships, with respect for the evolving capacity of boys and girls and the informed decisions of adolescents and young people regarding their sexuality, from a participatory, intercultural, gender-sensitive, and human rights perspective”.

The Operational Guide sets out some Targets:

1. All public and private education institutions to have programmes of comprehensive sexuality education aligned with the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development and international standards.
2. Increase the number and proportion of children, adolescents and young people with information and knowledge about sexual and reproductive issues, appropriate to their ages.
3. Increase the number and proportion of children, adolescents and young people who take informed decisions in sexual matters with a degree of autonomy consistent with their age.

And the following tentative indicators were identified for these targets:

1. Consistency of the official curriculum for comprehensive sexuality education with the criteria of the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development and with international standards.
2. Percentage of children, adolescents and young people who have completed an annual comprehensive sexuality education course for each school level.
3. Percentage of children, adolescents and young people who have information and knowledge about sexual and reproductive topics adequate for their respective ages.

Given the institutional design of Argentina the Federal Board of Education would need to determine which are the adequate contents under the terms of the PA. This has already been done in Argentina since the Comprehensive Sexual Education Act (ESI) and its contents were approved by the Board, where the ministers of education of the Nation and the 24 provinces are present, and is in effect. This means that target number 1 and its indicator would be achieved.

However, in the Province of Tucuman, not all schools provide this content. The reasons (or excuses) are diverse in nature2, but the most relevant are: a) the lack of training of the teaching staff, b) the scope of action of each school, especially private ones, to establish their contents despite receiving state funding, c) to allege the right of parents to choose the education they give their children, d) the lack of effective control over compliance with ESI from areas of government to each of the educational establishments.

When analyzing this situation and observing the other goals and indicators, it can be seen that if these situations are not reversed, despite having achieved goal 1, we will not achieve goals 2 and 3 and, in the process, we will not have data on what is going wrong.
We must recognize that, at least with regard to Argentina, in the provision of Comprehensive Sexuality Education the State is not the only one involved as a uniform subject and with an unambiguous will. Therefore, the aim is to establish which is the institutional mechanism that can achieve this goal, together with state actors and at the same time, limiting the spaces for any possible resistance.

The first step for a national state in this context is, for example, to improve its coordination and motivation capacity for the provinces to comply with ESI national law and, at the same time, make efforts to achieve the effective provision of these contents in provincial schools.

Given this situation, we can think of new targets and indicators aimed at paying attention to the institutional frameworks engaged in comprehensive sexuality education:

Target: Generate the mechanism that does not leave to the discretion of a province to implement or not the ESI. Indicator: incentive system (budget or resources of various kinds) for compliance with the ESI Act.

Target: Generate a mechanism for compliance evaluation and monitoring with ESI from the State but with the participation of non-governmental actors, and especially adolescents. Indicator: reporting system on non-compliance with ESI.

Target: Generate institutional frameworks that improve the control capacity of the authority of each province. Indicator: survey system of educational institutions and sanctions for non-compliance.

At the same time, it can also be considered how compliance with goals 2 and 3 can be measured, given that in order to realize these objectives there is a need to generate capacities to measure them.

Although the recognition of rights at the constitutional level is clear and the prevalence among standards is clear, the resistance seen in practice makes it vital that there be policy coherence until the level of control and monitoring is improved. In fact, as the theme often puts into question “the dominant moral”, the existence of specific legislation on the subject becomes pertinent.

Therefore, it may be important to focus on establishing the recognition of these programs, policies or regulations on: conscientious objection; informed consent; confidentiality; or the limits of parental authority over the rights of adolescents, just to give some examples.

At this level it is worth noting the importance of expressly recognizing, in the design of the public policy, the respect for the diversity of populations, the obligation to comply with the principle of universal access or level of coverage, as well as the formal occasions of civil society participation, the establishment of opportunities to favor enforceability and accountability, especially of the most neglected populations. And to determine very specific indicators about them.

With this example we seek to highlight the importance of filling those spaces that the Guide left when defining what the mechanism to operationalize and monitor compliance with the MC would be. These spaces that the States established in the Operational Guide regarding the targets, and especially the tentative indicators, are an opportunity for non-governmental organizations to underpin this process, seeking an institutional design suited to reality and the peculiarities of each territory which will be the basis for consolidating state apparatus committed to the realization of human rights.

Above all, institutional dynamics that will be more effective both to address those access barriers that come from specific social dynamics and to generate outcome indicators to capture the needs of the target populations. ~

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1 The Operational guide is a technical tool intended to provide the Latin American and Caribbean countries with specific guidelines for implementing the Montevideo Consensus, it was prepared by ECLAC and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in August 2015.

2 There may be more examples, but the idea is to identify those causes which are also structural issues.