Ads in Colombia must Recognize Children as Subjects with Rights
Author: Ricardo Duarte, Duarte, Garcia & Asociados

Colombia enacted landmark legislation last 8th of November 2006, Law 1098 of 2006, which will enter into effect next May 8th, 2007, that contains the "Code for the Infancy and Adolescence" for the country’s 18 million children and adolescents.

The set of new articles make children, regardless of nationality, subjects of rights, and not objects of protection. Some of the most significant changes the law introduces, vis-à-vis the former "Code for Minors", regarding advertising to Children and Adolescents are:

• They will be protected, in general, against any act that may menace or violate its rights (Art. 20).
• They will have the right to seek, receive and diffuse information and ideas through the different available mass media, subject to the necessary restrictions to protect their security, health and morale (Art. 34).
• The mass media shall be responsible, among other, for: (i) promoting, by means of the diffusion of information, the rights and liberties of the children and adolescents, as well as its welfare and its mental and physical health. (ii) refraining to carry out broadcasts or publications that attempted against the psychic, moral integrity or physical condition of the minors, that incite to violence, that praise in fact criminality or contraventions, or that contain morbid or pornographic descriptions; and (iii) refraining to transmit ads for cigarettes and alcohol in schedules catalogued for minors by the competent agency (Art. 47).

By virtue of such law, Colombia passes from a self regulatory system into a legal framework that offers integral legal protection against deceptive, unfair or inappropriate advertising that affect the rights or liberties of children or adolescents.