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Summary: Statement delivered by Peter Newell at The African Child Policy Forum Second International Policy Conference on the African Child: Violence Against Girls in Africa, taking place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, May 11 and 12, 2006. Peter Newell, Coordinator of the Global Initiative to End Corporal Punishment of Children It is so universal that it is an issue which touches most people very personally. Adults find it much easier, much more comfortable, to focus on the extreme forms of violence against children, and on violence by children against children. But we will not make significant progress in challenging all forms of violence while we continue to defend and condone, and allow states to authorise, this routine, daily, casual violence. There is no more symbolic indication of the current low status of girls and boys in our societies than the assumption that adults can hit and humiliate them with impunity. Improving the status of children, moving on from regarding them as property to a proper respect for them as individual people and rights holders alongside the rest of us, demands immediate and uncompromising condemnation and prohibition of all currently legalised violence against them. Most of us were hit and humiliated as children; most parents have hit their growing children. We don’t like to think badly of our parents - or of our parenting. That makes it difficult to see this is as the fundamental issue of equality and human rights which it is. One distinction is that with this form of violence, unlike most of the others that will be discussed and condemned at this conference, women are perpetrators of it within the family alongside men. Women, still taking the major role in the care of young children, spend far more time with them. Of course, one can analyse further the power relationships within families, and where the violence originates. But we should not spend too much time analysing causes, and risk factors and so on: there is a human rights imperative for prohibiting and eradicating this violence now. Yes – moving on from corporal punishment is a challenge – in my country as well as yours. In fact, particularly in my country – the UK: the UK has a special responsibility for spreading corporal punishment around through colonisation, slavery, military occupation and some missionary teaching. More than 70 countries including many in this region, have adopted the ancient English common law defence of “reasonable chastisement”. Other colonial powers have had similar influences. No culture or state should suggest it “owns” corporal punishment of children; now all states have an immediate human rights obligation to condemn and eradicate it. The UN Secretary General’s Study on Violence against Children needs to mark a real turning point; an end to the adult hypocrisy and double standards that have defended violence and humiliation of children for so long. How can any state in any continent pretend that it is serious about child protection while it continues to authorise in its law direct violence against children in schools, other institutions, penal systems and the home? Some people respond: “But children are different”. Yes – but their differences – their unique human potential, their initial fragility and developmental state, the special difficulties they face in seeking help – none of these justifies less legal protection from violence. Children’s right to respect for their human dignity and physical integrity is equal to our right. Respect for the dignity of every individual is the foundation of international human rights law. In seeking prohibition of all corporal punishment, including in the family, as I hope this Conference will, we are not asking favours of state governments. We are insisting that they take seriously and fulfil their clear human rights obligations, under both international and regional instruments. At this conference we will be launching a major all-Africa report, Ending legalised violence against children, published by the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children, together with Save the Children Sweden and endorsed by many organisations in the region. The report details the clear human rights obligations to prohibit and to eliminate through educational and other measures, all violent and humiliating punishment. There are messages from the chairpersons of the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, from Paulo Pinheiro leading the UNSG’s Study, from the First Lady of Gambia and from Emeritus Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Desmond Tutu’s support, alongside other key faith leaders globally, is important because some, in my country and yours, produce religious justifications for corporal punishment, seeing it as not just a right but a duty. But there are now respected leaders in all the major faiths who strongly challenge the idea that religious texts justify this violence against children. All of us have freedom of religious belief, but when it comes to practicing our religion, we have to respect the fundamental rights of others, including their right to respect for human dignity and physical integrity. The report documents the current legal status of corporal punishment in every state in Africa and it summarises existing research into prevalence. This underlines just how common and serious the problem is. The report also summarises research with children. Children increasingly are being accorded their right to speak out on this issue which affects them so directly. When allowed to, they tell us how much it hurts them, and not just physically, it hurts them “inside”, as a research report into the views of young – five to seven year-old children in the UK is titled. It is not just the reality of it, the pain and the disrespect. It is the fact that adults are still showing their approval of it.
Moving on from Violent Punishment of Children
May 11 2006
Violent punishment – hitting and beating children – and other forms of cruel or humiliating punishment are common in states throughout the world. This is not particularly an African issue. It is a global issue. And unlike many of the forms of violence to be discussed here, it does not disproportionately affect girls: among young children, who probably receive most corporal punishment in their homes and families, research suggests that boys and girls are equally affected. As they grow, some research suggests that boys tend to suffer more from severe forms of corporal punishment than girls. In a few states, laws allowing corporal punishment in schools and penal systems discriminate by prohibiting it for girls but authorising it for boys. But basically, and particularly in the family where violent, humiliating punishments are most common, this is a universal issue. Violent punishment scars the childhoods of a majority of children in almost every state in the world.
But at last, in the context of almost universal acceptance of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, of growing impact of regional human rights mechanisms and of the current UNSG’s Study on Violence against Children, we are beginning to make real progress. All nine of the Regional Consultations held in connection with the Study advocated prohibition of corporal punishment. The presence of children speaking out at all those consultations made it very much more difficult for adults to remain in denial about the scale of violent and humiliating punishment of children.
So far, globally, less than 20 states have completely prohibited all corporal punishment, with about 10 more committed to do so. About 52 million of the world’s 2195 million children already live in countries where the law gives them the same protection as adults from being hit, in their homes and everywhere else. In schools, globally more than 100 states have prohibited corporal punishment; only 31 states, including some in Africa, still allow corporal punishment – whipping, flogging or caning - as a sentence of the courts for children.
Of course law reform on its own will not end violent and humiliating punishment of children. But let us be clear that without clear and explicit law reform, there will not be much progress towards reducing it. We have to understand the purpose of law reform and our report does explain it in detail. In relation to prohibiting parental corporal punishment, the first purpose is to send a clear, preventive message, to provide the only safe basis for child protection and for the promotion of positive, non-violent forms of child-rearing. Prosecuting parents is most unlikely to be in their children’s interests, so there needs to be very clear guidance to accompany law reform. The first purpose of any good law must be educational.
It is pursuing law reform which remains controversial, and so difficult for governments. But let us not hear any more adult excuses, any more delay. From a children’s perspective further delay is intolerable. From the perspective of international human rights law it is illegal. Why should children wait? Would we wait to prohibit violence against women until we can provide full employment and universal anger management classes for men?
It really is no good suggesting that we should just start with education, and leave law reform for the moment. We need clear commitment from political leaders and hopefully from inter-governmental organisations like the African Union too. Ministers and politicians can tell the public that their human rights obligations require them to prohibit; they have no choice.
There are now strong advocates for law reform in all states – many NGOs and some human rights commissions across Africa have already endorsed our report and its recommendations and I hope more will do so. If states remain hesitant, we will need to pursue legal challenges to pressurise them further.
Changing the law is not in itself expensive and it delivers a strong and essential educational message. Linking law reform to comprehensive awareness-raising of the law and of children’s right to protection and promoting positive, non-violent forms of child-rearing and education does not have to be so expensive either. Governments should not see the education process as a completely new and separate exercise. To achieve widespread and speedy change in attitudes, clear messages must be built into all the points of contact with future parents and parents – in pre-natal and post-natal care, at birth registration, immunisations, routine health checks and visits, pre-schooling, school entry, the school curriculum and so on. And into the initial and in-service training of all those who work with and for families and children.
Save the Children, other NGOs, human rights commissions and UNICEF and UNESCO, as well as some governments have pioneered materials and programmes which need to be universalised. The process needs to be permanent and sustainable and government-led.
So - no more adult excuses: this UN Study provides the spur to move quickly on, to put in the past the idea that states should authorise violence and humiliating punishment of children and instead focus on giving priority to ending all violence against children.
Peter Newell, Coordinator, Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children
Owner: Peter Newellpdf: www.crin.org/violence/search/closeup.asp?infoID=8227