125. Regarding the obligation to adopt domestic legal provisions established in Article 2 of
the American Convention, 96 in its Report No. 83/10, the Inter-American Commission
indicated that, “[a]lthough the petitioners did not advance a claim under the said article
[before this organ], based on the arguments as to fact and law offered by the parties in the
adversarial proceedings, [it found] it necessary to analyze its application under the iura
novit curia principle.” It noted that there were significant indications that there had been a
transaction involved in the birth of the child M and that “the State […] should have
investigated this in light of its international obligations.” However, the Commission
considered it proved that, “in Argentina, there are no criminal laws that punish the sale of
children.” It indicated that Article 35 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which
forms part of the corpus juris incorporated into Article 19 of the American Convention,
establishes that the States Parties shall take all appropriate domestic measures to prevent,
inter alia, “the sale of or traffic in children for any purpose or in any form.” Furthermore,
Article 2 of the Optional Protocol to this Convention on the sale of children, child prostitution
and child pornography defines the sale of children. The Commission indicated that, in light
of Article 2, in relation to Articles 1(1) and 19 of the American Convention, the State had
the obligation to adopt legislative measures to prevent the sale of children on its territory
and did not do so. This meant that it did not investigate with due diligence the allegation,
first of Mr. Fornerón and then of the Public Prosecution Service, that the child M “could have
been the victim of child-trafficking.” Based on the foregoing, the Commission concluded that
the State had violated Article 2, in relation to Articles 1(1) and 19 of the American
Convention, to the detriment of Mr. Fornerón and his daughter.
ii) Arguments of the representatives and of the State
126. The representatives argued that the State “had not complied with the obligation to
adopt the legislative, judicial or any other measures to prevent the sale of children on its
territory; because it did not investigate or punish the participants in the act of trafficking [of
which] the child and her father were victims.” They stated that “this violation began before
the birth of [M], because all the conditions of impunity for this to occur were in place in
Argentina.” The State “had and has the responsibility to protect the children on its territory,
to prevent, investigate and punish child-trafficking” and not having done so “continues to
create a risk, promoting impunity, and aggravating its responsibility.”
127. Among other arguments, the State underlined the different legislative measures that
had resulted in “an important change, not only in the country’s legal standards, but also in
[…] its case law.” Among these measures it mentioned: (a) the adoption of Law No. 25,854
creating the Single Register of applicants for guardianship for the purposes of adoption and
the decrees regulating the law, in particular the one creating the electronic network
interconnecting the 24 provincial registers, and (b) the adoption of Law No. 26,061 on the
integral protection of the rights of children and adolescents. In addition, it emphasized that
this legislative framework was established following the approval of the Convention on the
Rights of the Child, which took place with the adoption of Law No. 23,849. This Convention
“formed the basis for all the legislation concerning children following the 1994 reform of the
Constitution, which granted it constitutional rank, by explicitly incorporating it into
[paragraph] 22 of Article 75.” In addition, the State advised that a working group had been
established within the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, with the participation of
96
Article 2 of the American Convention establishes:
Where the exercise of any of the rights or freedoms referred to in Article 1 is not already ensured by
legislative or other provisions, the States Parties undertake to adopt, in accordance with their
constitutional processes and the provisions of this Convention, such legislative or other measures as
may be necessary to give effect to those rights or freedoms.
36
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