Advocacy efforts in Brazil to extend the recognition of children’s rights in early childhood Figure 2. Approval of the Legal Framework in the Senate on 3 February 2016
Source: Moreira Mariz/Agência Senado.
6. The implementation journey of the Legal Framework continues Following the approval by the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, the Legal Framework was sanctioned on 8 March 2016. The new law provides a regulatory framework with principles and guidelines to formulate and implement policies that safeguard the development of young children. The Legal Framework highlights the importance of cross-sector collaboration to achieve this. The enactment of the Legal Framework marked the start of a new phase in the work of the stakeholders supporting this legislative change: its implementation. This chapter starts with explaining the changing political context (Section 6.1) and how it affected implementation efforts and activities (Sections 6.2 and 6.3). Lessons learned from the process are described in the last section (Section 6.4).
6.1.
The post-2016 political and economic context presents barriers to the implementation of the Legal Framework
A few months after the adoption of the Legal Framework, Brazil entered a delicate and polarised political situation. On 31 August 2016, President Dilma Rousseff’s term came to an end following an impeachment process and Vice-President Michel Temer, from the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (MDB), assumed the presidency and completed the executive term until 2018. Temer’s term reflected mixed fortunes for ECD policies. On one hand, the budget for the Brasil Carinhoso programme was cut.163 This was an early childhood programme funded through Bolsa Família, a social welfare programme based on direct cash transfers164 that had been launched during Dilma’s presidency. On the other hand, the Minister of Social and Agrarian Development managed to use the platform of Bolsa Família to launch a new programme on ECD called Criança Feliz (see Box 5).
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