Human Rights and Development in the New Millennium: Towards a Theory of Change by Paul Gready & Wouter Vandenhole

Author:Paul Gready & Wouter Vandenhole [Gready, Paul & Vandenhole, Wouter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780415527309
Google: fDR3tgAACAAJ
Goodreads: 13711973
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

Violence against children in the world: the general setting

The general context

Violence against children is a problem of all times and occurs in all countries of the world. According to UNICEF’s Progress for Children: “The true extent of violence against children is impossible to measure because so much of it happens in secret and is not reported” (UNICEF, 2009: 7). In the same report, UNICEF estimated that some 500 million to 1.5 billion children per year experience violence (ibid.). Many facts about the dimensions and causes of violence against children, and ideas about how to counter it, were disseminated through the seminal United Nations study World Report on Violence Against Children, compiled under the leadership of Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro (2006). The Pinheiro Report was the first global study on the subject and gave a forceful boost to the level of international attention for the problem. It also was instrumental in placing the problem of violence against children on political and policy agendas across countries and organizations around the world. The process around the Pinheiro Report triggered an unprecedented level of action seeking to counter violence against children among both governments and civil society actors.

However, despite many valuable efforts since 2006, the problem of violence against children still prevails. According to UNICEF’s (2009) Progress For Children Report, two-thirds of the world’s children are subject to physical punishment, while more than half of girls and women aged 15 to 49 years think that, under certain circumstances, wife-beating is acceptable. Nearly 70 per cent of children living in countries such as Egypt, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Togo, Côte d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic experience both physical punishment and psychological aggression. The available percentages for Asian countries vary from 58 per cent for Vietnam to 37 per cent for Mongolia and 35 per cent for Laos (UNICEF, 2009: 7, 8). More than one third of the women in the age group of 20 to 24 years in developing countries were married or in union as children (i.e. before having turned 18). One third of these child brides live in India. For boys, the risk of child marriage is lower, although there are also seven countries in the world where 10 per cent or more of boys are exposed to marriage or union before their eighteenth birthday. These countries include Mali, Senegal, Madagascar and Mozambique in Africa, and India and Nepal in Asia (ibid.: 26, 10–11). Female genital cutting, child labour, sexual exploitation, child trafficking and recruitment of child soldiers are other rampant forms of violence against children. According to a significant 2011 NGO report that reviewed many of the studies on violence against children conducted since 2006: “some forms of violence in some settings may even be on the increase” (NGO Advisory Council, 2011: 2). And “[a]reas of progress are too few” (ibid.). UNICEF’s (2012) Progress for Children report documents this specifically in relation to adolescents.

The Pinheiro Report also tabled a clear definition of violence against children, according to which violence against children is: “the

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