Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The Technical Standards Institute of Costa Rica (INTECO) was created in 1987 in response to a Costa Rican need for technical standardization. INTECO has greatly evolved over the years developing a very wide range of regulations with around 30 technical committees and more than 500 published standards. Within these committees is the "CTN 04 Bituminous Mixtures and Asphalts Binders” which belongs to the category of Asphalt Mixtures, developed in 2004 thanks to the efforts of LanammeUCR. This document includes a summary of each INTECO standard related to Asphalt Mixes, with illustrative images of equipment and recommendations by professionals of LanammeUCR to ensure the correct application of these processes. This summary also includes three comparative tables with the most important differences of equipment, procedures and precision and bias between the latest AASHTO and ASTM bituminous mixtures standards and their equivalent to INTECO standard. These methods have not being updated in Costa Rica in more than seven years, so the former members of the technical committee as well as anyone in the field are invited to be part of a new team to not only update these rules but also create new ones.

This paper discusses the relationship between the Costa Rican Seismic Code 2010 (CSCR-10) specifications and the research generated as result of those specifications. The use of timber for construction in Costa Rica has been growing since 2000, including the development of industrialized products such as structural laminated timber (GLULAM) and plywood. Consequently, the CSCR began to work on a chapter for the CSCR-10, in which the specification for structural timber is developed. The objective of this paper is to highlight the impact that the design codes and standard specification have had in the development of applied research in the field of design and construction of timber structures. To establish this relationship, the sections of the CSCR-10 are explained and then, the most relevant investigations are described. Finally, it is concluded that the CSCR has a great impact in the development of research of structural timber in Costa Rica. The previous is reflected on the eight investigations that have been carried out in a period of eight years.

As part of the Institute for Latin American Studies (IDELA) project on Current Migration Trends in Latin America, an analysis of the regional regulations on human rights is conducted in this paper in order to highlight efforts for an interpretative harmonization, and to ulteriorly study the possibilities of building regional regulations. The scope of the international human rights law is reviewed, since the international treaties protecting such rights include the protection of migrants as a vulnerable social group within this perspective

This paper focuses on the need of studying the main foundations of the United Nations International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families that entered into force in 2003.  To accomplish this purpose, first, ILO regulations on migrant population and labor relations will be reviewed; then, the tool will be deeply analyzed; finally, the article will conclude with the essential evaluations the Committee on Migrant Workers carried out for some countries of the Central America region, signatories of the Convention. It is worth noting that Costa Rica does not currently take part in this tool; but even so the other countries participating in it have already received high valued effects and implications, especially El Salvador and Guatemala, as it is going to be analyzed in this paper.

The main objective of this paper is to show how the actions in higher education should favor the guarantee and protection of the rights of children and adolescents within the environment of the celebration of the XXV Anniversary of the signing and ratification of the Convention on the Rights of minors. In the same vein, an analytical and interpretative framework on how the social responsibilities regarding this issue, on a national and institutional level, is presented. Also, this study includes a review of the actions from the Division of Education for Work, providing a series of reflections accompanied by a proposal that will allow the use of an approach which is relevant, responsible and committed to the population aforementioned.

In recent decades, the demand for autonomy has become a banner of struggle for the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Latin America. However, the term autonomy, due to their different uses and implications on international standards, creates confusion and separatists fears in the States. In the conceptualization and formulation of autonomy there are various ideas and proposals, the scopes ranging from regional and municipal level to the local. This further complicates the fulfillment of this important demand. Autonomy is thus a central demand of all claims associated with indigenous rights, also discussed in the international arena and within many nations. This application refers to self-determination of peoples, basically in their own geographical areas, mostly rural type. The multiethnic condition as a basis for the establishment of areas of indigenous autonomy has already begun, highlighting the case of Canada where land rights also include natural resources. Even in Latin America, the cases of Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia and Nicaragua in which indigenous autonomy has been elevated to constitutional status.

Central American countries are traditionally perceived as expulsing countries of migrants looking for a dream of progress associated with the possibility of living in a developed country, i. e., North-South migration is being reproduced as the most known migration existing. However, in the last years, South-South migration has augmented as a consequence of the increasing interdependency, the processes of regional integration, and the recognition of common problems. Central America is not the exception. Even in recent years, it has become a region of temporary reception of non-Central American migrants also coming from countries with similar socio-economic conditions. This article presents a general discussion of trends and challenges of the region and how this generates impacts on migration. Problems such as environmental vulnerability, family reunification resulting in unaccompanied children migration, counter-positions in national security policies, and mobility freedom, among others, are aspects present in the current Central American debate, and how migration issue has become relevant in recent years. Actually, this issue went from being just a matter of giving support to the Central American migrant who is leaving to the need of proposing common policies for the care of extra-regional migrants, as well as of returned and deported population.

This work provides a brief description of the various political and economic contexts that enabled the incorporation of human rights in different Argentine institutions, starting with informal education and eventually coming to form part of the curricula at all educational levels. Its purpose is to visualize how human rights education developed and which spheres of the Argentine culture drove and demanded the need for human rights and human rights education. Since one of the purposes of education is to train citizens, this article intends to show that the practice of human rights is a way of exercising citizenship and that the educational sphere is the proper context for human rights to gain respect in diverse cultural practices.

Migrant workers’ human rights have been brought to the current scope of public law, and their labor character has been prioritized. This movement for migrant workers’ human rights can be highlighted from the perspective of the entry into force of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, on 1 July 2003. In this document, two international regulatory texts are merged to strengthen the enjoyment of those rights in these groups of migrant workers: ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

People’s economic and social advance can only be carried out if they are accompanied by a Culture of Peace: Education has a dual role as a human right to teach human rights and a specific call in building this Culture among the younger generations. The central argument of this paper is how the Culture of Peace in schools is an everyday experience in the classroom. This poses challenges such as training teachers who must prepare to educate new generations to confront the conflict without violence and to develop an alternate way of looking at the differences between people and societies. It is concluded that it is essential that educators must have a lifelong learning processes. This training should contemplate personal knowledge to manage the emotions that arise in every interaction, which will result in the well-being of students in the school.