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National law and policies on minimum ages – Cuba

 

According to the CRC, laws and policies must be directed to the best interest of the child. This is especially so in provisions that aim to safeguard the child against exploitation or an early end to childhood, i.e. in the instances where children are most vulnerable and at risk. Yet such safeguards are often ignored and different areas of legislation found to clash with each other. What happens if the age for the end of compulsory education is 14 but the minimum age of employment is 12? Or vice versa? What if a girl can be married before school leaving age - will she then return to school? And who ensures schooling in prisons, when in reality education should protect children from incarceration?

 

 

 

 

With 192 parties to it, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the most widely ratified UN treaty. Each State Party must submit periodic reports to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which uses this process to monitor State compliance with the treaty. The vast majority of the information on minimum ages presented on these pages is taken directly from such reports (occasionally, if these failed to include relevant information concerning minimum ages, other components of the reporting process - such as the Committee’s Concluding Observations - were consulted). States Parties’ reports constitute self-assessment by governments and are therefore authoritative sources, emanating directly from those empowered to make decisions. Using this type of sources also permits a range of actors to hold governments accountable for the standards which they report under the CRC. The sections of these reports have been reproduced faithfully, and readers are encouraged to make use of the full original text, available here.

 

Individual country reports are often written by diverse parts of the government, and frequently run to more than 100 pages. Moreover, within some states’ legal systems there are various recognised sources of law, which frequently generate conflicting minimum ages. Distilling precise numbers out of such documents is therefore a precarious task. While we would encourage cross-country comparison, we would also stress the danger that those countries with a more honest engagement with the reporting process might come off worse when compared with those which would mis-represent the degree of compliance, whether wilfully or not. For a full explanation of the principles that guided us in our analysis, please visit the introductory pages here.

 

Source: Initial report: CRC/C/8/Add.30, 14 February 1996
 
Minimum age for the end of compulsory education
103. The right to education is defined in article 51 of the Constitution: “Everybody has a right to education. This right is guaranteed by the extensive and free system of schools, part-time boarding schools, boarding schools and scholarships in all types and at all levels of education, by the free provision of school materials to every child and young person regardless of the economic situation of the family, and by the provision of courses suited to the student's aptitudes, the requirements of society and the needs of economic and social development.”
153. Cuba's free system of general education, which is compulsory at the basic level, constitutes in practice a powerful obstacle to child labour […]
 
Minimum age for admission to employment
31. The labour legislation sets the minimum working age at 17 years […]
154. In accordance with the international regulations to which Cuba subscribes, the Labour Code establishes 17 years as the age at which young people acquire the capacity to conclude work contracts (in exceptional cases children aged 15 and 16 may do so). The Code has a specific chapter on child labour which establishes the requirement of a medical examination before recruitment and the right of young people to initial preparation or training for the job, as well as the requirement that they must be placed in jobs suited to their physical and mental development, with prohibitions on specific activities such as work as stevedores and work underground or high above ground, at night, in mining, or in places where harmful, reactive or toxic substances are used, or in any type of work in which they are responsible for their own safety or the safety of others.
155. Children aged at least 14 years may conclude work contracts with the labour bodies under special conditions of apprenticeship, subject to prior authorization by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, to perform work suited to their physical and mental development and in conditions which do not interfere with their education.
 
Minimum age for marriage
Information unavailable
 
Minimum age for criminal responsibility
30. Cuba's criminal legislation stipulates that only persons aged over 16 years may be prosecuted and it provides different treatment for offenders aged between 18 and 20 years. […]

 

Source: Initial report: CRC/C/8/Add.30, 14 February 1996