Direitos de crianças e adolescentes em São Luís: quem prioriza? – uma análise a partir do Sistema de Garantia de Direitos no território Cidade Olímpica

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the performance of the Child and Adolescent Rights Guarantee System (SGDCA) in the territory of Cidade Olímpica, in São Luís, Maranhão, focusing on the axis of rights promotion. The research sought to understand to what extent the mechanisms that compose the system are capable of implementing the perspective of comprehensive protection in a territory marked by profound social inequalities, violence, precarious public policies, and historical fragilities in the guarantee of rights. The study is based on a socio-historical understanding of the constitution of children’s and adolescents’ rights in Brazil, addressing the mechanisms of control and charity present in the Doctrine of Irregular Situation up to the consolidation of the Doctrine of Comprehensive Protection through the 1988 Federal Constitution and the Child and Adolescent Statute. It also discusses the impacts of neoliberalism on the materialization of social policies and on the operationalization of the SGDCA. The research is grounded in historical-dialectical materialism, using a qualitative approach, bibliographic and documentary research, and fieldwork carried out through semi-structured interviews with managers, coordinators, and technical professionals working in the territory. The results show that the structural conditions of Cidade Olímpica directly impact the operationalization of the Rights Guarantee System, especially within the rights promotion axis, which is constantly crossed by emergency demands related to the protection axis. Institutional resource insufficiency, budgetary limitations, fragility in network articulation, and difficulties in the conceptual and normative appropriation of the SGDCA by the researched subjects were identified, in addition to the predominance of knowledge empirically constructed through daily practice. The study also identified the overload of services, especially the Guardianship Council, and the persistence of traces of the Doctrine of Irregular Situation in the organization of childhood policies. It is concluded that, although there have been important normative advances in guaranteeing the rights of children and adolescents, their effectiveness remains limited by the structural contradictions of capitalist society and by the inequalities that characterize peripheral territories, compromising the materialization of the comprehensive protection legally established.