Institutional child abuse in Colombia

Institutional mistreatment of children and adolescents is an invisible form of violence that affects the exercise of their human rights and can lead to damage to their physical and mental health and integral development. This apparently unnoticed form of violence has been the subject of few studies that attempt to focus on institutional management, whose practices are harmful to children, contrary to the provisions of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child and, in the Colombian case, the 1991 Political Constitution. In Colombia, institutional maltreatment is a frequent but unrecognized practice, which is exercised within the framework of the professional functions of child care and overflows in all the intuitions that directly or indirectly determine the legal situation of the child and his or her rights. The recognition of institutional maltreatment constitutes a self-critical position of the State and the adoption of measures to counteract its practice.