In previous years, an intense debate on the advantages and challenges that proposes the local area as possible space for management, generation and mobilization of social, economic, cultural and political resources of a community territorially defined has opened up . At the moment, for the exercise of children and adolescents’ rights, the challenge resides in translating the principles emanated through the conventions and other international instruments to local policies that facilitate greater impacts.

At the local levels, especially in communities, the possibility of anchoring the defence and promotion to defines situations that favour the conditions of children and adolescents for their well-being is imminent, bringing with it more opportunities in the future. Nevertheless, the municipal applications face limitations that affect such objective, like very old practical policies related to power or particular interests, disarticulation with intermediate and national applications, lack of resources or its incorrect usage. These situations affect the attempts of consolidation for a medium and long term policy directed toward infancy. The vision of conceiving infancy as subjects of the law must permeate all actions and practices of States and the society at the national, intermediate and local levels.

It is for this reason that the joint initiative between UNICEF and UNDP tries to demonstrate the potential of the interagency work, by means of implementing a project that approaches the situation of infancy and the advances that local governments are taking, with the aim of learning experiences that are in the process of being developed in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Thus, it is hoped to produce systematic knowledge and management tools that contribute to sustaining recommendations for governmental counterparts and the civil society on how to formulate and implement local policies in favour of the child and the adolescent.

A base of strategic intelligence on experiences of local management for the child and the adolescent has been developed as part of this experience. The results and lessons of this initiative are part of the reflection process that will follow in its construction.

The challenge that the municipal applications and the communitarian organizations face requires contributions and collective efforts that fortify the sustainability of democratic processes for the total development of the rights of the child and the adolescent in the region.

NEWS
	The programme “Child-friendly Cities” has been constituted as an initiative directed at supporting and rewarding all those local organizations that work to accomplish the principles contained in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and, more especially, those relating to real and effective child participation.
	BASIS FOR A DEBATE ON CHILD PARTICIPATION IN A LOCAL CONTEXT The  present guide aspires to provide orientation to local administrative bodies since these are the first points of reference for the general child population and everyone involved in working for the benefit of children using basic instruments to initiate, foster and mobilize their actions with a view to promoting the participation of their youngest members of society.