Global scourge of violence against children

A NEW report compiled by various humanitarian agencies has shown that one out of two children between two and 17 years of age, experiences some form of violence globally each year.

The report estimates that more than 1 billion children each year are affected by physical, sexual or psychological violence, suffering injury, disability or death.

This was due to countries’ failures to follow established strategies to protect them the new report published by the World Health Organization, United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-general on Violence against Children and the End Violence Partnership.

The agencies collated inputs from more than 1 000 decision-makers in 155 countries who assessed their violence prevention mechanisms.

The report focused on the interpersonal violence that accounts for most acts of violence against children, and these include child maltreatment, bullying, youth violence, and intimate partner violence.

“A third of students aged 11 to 15 years worldwide have been bullied by their peers in the past month, and 120 million girls are estimated to have suffered some form of forced sexual contact before the age of 20 years.

“Emotional violence affects one in three children and worldwide one in four children lives with a mother who is the victim of intimate partner violence,” the report said.

Unicef executive director Henrietta Fore says violence against children has always been pervasive and since the coronavirus outbreak, things could be getting much worse.

“Lockdowns, school closures and movement restrictions have left far too many children stuck with their abusers, without the safe space that school would normally offer.”

The report signals a clear need in all countries to scale up efforts to protect children from harm.

It said while nearly all countries (88%) have key laws in place to protect children against violence, less than half of countries (47%) said these were being strongly enforced.