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Summary: Speech delivered by Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe at a conference on violence against children in Europe on 20 October 2005 in Berlin.
Berlin 21 October 2005 I should like to start by congratulating the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, on their initiative to organise this conference. Five years after the Bundestag passed the legislation banning violence against children is a good time to evaluate the practical consequences of this important legal measure, identify the shortcomings, and look into the future. This is also a good opportunity to compare the situation in Germany with other countries in Europe and around the world, to exchange experiences and learn about good practices that may exist elsewhere. My first reflection is on the title of the conference itself. āRaising children without violenceā implies that raising children with violence is also possible. I beg to disagree, and I will tell you why. Like many of you, I am addicted to using the thesaurus, and when I type in the verb āraiseā I get the following synonyms; ābring up, educate, nurture, and rearā. I am not a native English speaker, and I am certain that some of you who are here may disagree with me - although probably not for linguistic reasons - but to my mind none of these words can be associated with violence. You do not nurture with smacks, and you do not educate with slaps. You simply cannot raise children with violence. Now that we established what corporal punishment of children is not ā namely education - let us try to determine what it is. The best way to do so is to listen to children themselves and here are just some of the testimonies gathered by the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children, which is also participating in this conference. In their research, five to seven-year-olds were asked about smacking. Smacking ā for those who do not know ā is a euphemism regularly used by parents to describe or even justify their violent behaviour with children. A legal equivalent to the term āsmackingā is āreasonable chastisementā. These are just some of the childrenās answers: āA smack is when people hit you and it stings and I cryā said a five-year-old girl. āItās when someone is cross with you and they hit you and it hurtsā said another. āA smackā said a seven-year-old, āis when parents try to hit you, but instead of calling it a hit, they call it a smackā. These words are, in my view, a very apt description of what corporal punishment really is - a violent hypocrisy, which humiliates and hurts. For the Council of Europe, children are not mini-persons with mini-rights, mini-feelings and mini-human dignity. They are vulnerable human beings with full rights which require more, not less protection. It is therefore absolutely unacceptable that when it comes to the protection of their physical and psychological integrity, they should be worse off than adults. For years, the Council of Europe has worked to protect children against violence. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child ā which has been ratified by all member states of the Council of Europe - the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Social Charter and the Revised European Social Charter, constitute the main legal framework within which we operate. The latter clearly guarantees the right of children and young persons to protection and the right of children and young persons to social, legal and economic protection The Revised Social Charter requires our member states to ban corporal punishment of children in the home and school environment. Last year, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly adopted a Resolution concerning the ban of all forms of corporal punishment. The Committee of Ministers has adopted Recommendations to the Member States in various areas, the most recent one being on violence in care institutions. As regards violence in the family, handbooks on parenting without violence as well as on methods for consulting and listening to children are being drafted. One month ago, the 7th Conference of Ministers responsible for Youth, which took place in Budapest, was devoted to āHuman dignity and social cohesion: youth policy responses to violenceā. The final Declaration adopted by the Ministers recommends that as regards the family, governments should encourage cross-sectorial co-operation, in particular between child, youth and family policies with a view to developing strategies, particularly educational ones, aimed at preventing domestic violence as well as promoting the family environment as a place where children and young people can learn and adopt a non-violent lifestyle. I welcome the emphasis placed by your Conference on the importance of education to democratic citizenship. 2005 has been proclaimed by the Council of Europe as the European Year of Citizenship through Education. Democracy should be learned and lived on an everyday basis by both children and adults! To this end, citizenship education concepts and policies should be translated into reality for children and adults alike. The jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights has progressively condemned corporal punishment of children in all circumstances including in their own home. In terms of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right not to be subject to torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is of an absolute nature. We cannot hide behind the right to privacy, behind the four walls of our homes, to justify corporal punishment. My message is clear: we must work together to make Europe a corporal punishment-free area. No compromise is acceptable. Even milder forms of corporal punishment, generally referred to as āreasonable chastisementā should not be accepted. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that domestic law allowing such āreasonable chastisementā failed to provide children with adequate protection, because such protection must include an āeffective deterrenceā. Fourteen of our member states ā they are clearly indicated in the map on page 20 of the programme of this conference - have introduced explicit bans on all corporal punishment in their legislation. We expect that other countries will soon follow and legally abolish corporal punishment. In other countries, some positive changes in court jurisprudence occurred. However, these changes do not have the deterrent effect and the legal certainty of a clear ban on corporal punishment by law. As Thomas Hammarberg rightly said yesterday, āthe purpose of banning corporal punishment is not of course to prosecute and punish more parents. It satisfies Human Rights by giving children equal protection of their physical integrity and human dignityā. In short, we must treat children for what they are: holders of rights. Sweden was a pioneer in Europe to introduce legislation banning corporal punishment. It was a courageous step as a large part of the Swedish population still thought that physical punishment was an indispensable tool for educating children. Time has proven that the legislator was right. Today, the vast majority of the Swedish population opposes every form of physical punishment of children. I am convinced that this change in attitudes was influenced by the pedagogical effect of legislation. Other countries followed and Germany was one of them. The Council of Europe fully endorses and praises the broad and multi-sectorial approach of the Act Outlawing Violence in Upbringing of Children which introduced childrenās āright to a non-violent upbringingā in the Civil Code. We would very much encourage other countries to follow Germanyās example, for the following reasons: Firstly, the co-operation between the Federal Ministry of Justice and the Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth is a good example of interaction between the different sectors, which is crucial if the action to abolish corporal punishment is to be efficient. Secondly, the introduction of legislative changes was accompanied by a nationwide information campaign on the new regulations, promoting non-violent methods of bringing children up, which are based on respect and affection. Thirdly, the reform has a strong research component and we are awaiting with great interest the results of the comprehensive research programme to study the reception and initial consequences of the Act governing the right to a non-violent upbringing. Finally, your emphasis on helping parents in assuming their child-raising responsibilities and making them aware of alternatives to corporal punishment is fully in line with the Council of Europe approach in this field. As you, we at the Council of Europe consider essential supporting parents in positive and non-violent upbringing of their children. This is one of the topics of our next Ministerial Conference which will take place in Portugal next year on the subject of āChanging in parenting: children today, parents tomorrowā. We must support parenting in the best interest of the child. We need to help parents to exercise parenting: after all, both parents and children have a common interest in understanding each other. In this respect, it is highly significant that the United Nations Convention on the rights of the child has replaced the concept of parentsā rights with parental responsibilities. It is important that families are supported by professional associations and authorities, at all levels, and that upbringing, care and education advance hand in hand. The backbone of our children-related activities for the period between 2006 and 2008 is a three-year Action Programme āBuilding a Europe for and with Childrenā, with the aim to streamline a child rights perspective into all of the Council of Europe activities. As the name indicates, our activities will not only be conducted for children, they will be discussed, designed and implemented with their active participation. As a part of this broader initiative, the Third Council of Europe Summit, which took place in May this year, endorsed a Programme of Action for the promotion of the Rights of the Child and their protection against all forms of violence. The main priorities of the Programme of Action can be summarised as the ā4 Psā: Protection of children against all forms of violence; The five identified areas of intervention are the family, the school, residential institutions, the community and the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse of children, where a new international legal instrument is being considered. The action in all five areas will include the framing of national prevention strategies, proposals for local integrated prevention strategies and the awareness-raising campaign which will be launched in April 2006 in Monaco, with a view to improve knowledge of childrenās rights, especially of their right to protection against all forms of violence. Our action to protect children against violence is not restricted to Europe. In partnership with UNICEF, the World Health Organisation, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and representatives of the civil society, the Council of Europe provided the forum for a regional consultation for Europe and Central Asia. The aim was to feed the preparation of a global study on violence against children commissioned by the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Over three hundred persons ā children, experts, politicians, academics, NGOs, practitioners ā gathered in Ljubljana in July this year, to take stock of the situation of children in an area stretching from Iceland to Uzbekistan. Europeās input to this global study includes the emphasis on the need to introduce a legal ban on corporal punishment. The best way to get our message across in the world is to implement it at home. If there is one single point that I should hope that this conference will send to other countries still hesitating in their attitude, it would be the one making it clear that discouraging corporal punishment by morally condemning it, is good but it is not enough. If we really want to protect our children and their physical and psychological integrity, we must not only condemn but also outlaw all forms of violence against them. A while ago, a group of children was invited to the Council of Europe to speak on positive parenting and non-violent upbringing. When discussing violence one of them said that āyou can stop but you cannot take it backā. Letās not spare our efforts to change both laws and peoplesā minds to stop violence against children, and letās do it today. Thank you very much for your attention.
Prevention of violence at local, national and international level;
Prosecution of criminals;
Participation of children.
The Council of Europe action aims first and foremost at avoiding violence from happening. Regardless of how badly a parent feels afterwards, some wounds may never heal. If we do not do anything, violence may beget violence, producing future tormentors of tomorrowās children.