Quem opina e quem decide? : estudo da regulação e das práticas relativas ao direito das crianças e adolescentes de opinar nos processos judiciais de Custódia e Responsabilidade de Criação na Venezuela desde 1998

Abstract

This work addresses the practice of listening to children and adolescents in legal processes and nurture responsibility (ward) in Venezuela. Regarding rights and participation as one of the mainstays of children recognition as people of rights, it is important to understand the way children are heard and their words considered in judicial sentences. This work uses qualitative methodologies and, besides an analysis of legal sentences, employs technics like the spaces observation and semi-structured interviews to protection judges and officials of the multidisciplinary apparatus of the Protection Circuit of Children and Adolescents in the Caracas s Metropolitan Area. The analysis is based on the anthropologic bibliography about the creation of new subjects of rights, childhood production and the children and childhood State management ways. This investigation seeks to contrast LOPNNA s (Law for protection of children and adolescents) principles, legal dispositions and procedures with the practices of actors forming the judicial custody process: judges and multidisciplinary apparatus, children and families in an attempt to achieve the ideal of letting children have a voice.