RIGHT TO HEALTH: The impact of violence on children’s right to health

Summary: Review of an event hosted by the UN Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva and the International NGO Council on Violence against Children on the impact of violence on children's right to health.

Foreshadowing last week’s Annual Day of Discussion on the Rights of the Child, an event organised by the Permanent Mission of Norway and the International NGO Council on Violence Against Children (NGO Council) focused on the impact of violence on children’s right to health.

At an event certainly not lacking in children's rights content, Harriet Elizabeth Berg, of the Norwegian delegation to the UN, acted as moderator and spoke of the prevalence of violence against children and the need to ensure legal prohibition of violence against children before introducing the speakers and posing questions to the panel throughout.

Marta Santos Pais, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children, spoke first, stressing the importance of considering violence as a health concern. Whether with regards to the direct violence of harmful traditional practices, or abuse leading to risky behaviour, Ms Pais was keen to emphasise the need to prohibit all forms of violence against children in law, but also to pursue the abolition of such violence in the communities where it is practised.

In a wide ranging speech, the Special Representative also spoke about the problems that can be caused by over medication used to gain control of children’s behaviour, a common practice in many countries, and the need to gather evidence to address this practice and to study the related effects of drug dependency and addiction.

Juan Mendez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, took the opportunity to talk about violence against children in the justice system, particularly the estimated 1 million children deprived of their liberty. Labelling the overuse of the juvenile justice system a product of an under developed welfare system, Mr Mendez called for the best interests of children to be placed at the centre of detention practices and for the minimisation of the difference between life inside and outside detention. This should include health care, whether for physical or mental health conditions.

Picking up on the issue of children affected by drug use, Mr Mendez spoke of abuses against children detained for the purposes of drug rehabilitation, including forced withdrawal, flogging therapy and electroshock, carried out in the guise of medical treatment of drug addiction. Calling for the closure of such treatment facilities, the Special Rapporteur noted the underrepresentation of harm reduction and evidence based programmes and said that opioid substitution therapy should be available to people in detention, including children.

Corporal punishment is the most common form of violence that children face, a fact raised by Peter Newell in his statement critical of attempts to separate child abuse from corporal punishment. He also criticised the pretence that effective child protection and child health systems can exist while the law authorises hitting, hurting, even injuring children as punishment. In a children’s rights focused approach sometimes lacking during the 22nd Human Rights Council Session, Mr Newell said, “we don’t look for proof that domestic violence against women damages their physical or mental health in order to justify prohibiting it and ending impunity. It would be insulting to women to do so, and it is equally insulting to children to suggest we have to prove harm in order to justify extending to them the legal protection that we as adults take for granted from being deliberately assaulted”.

“Why is it so difficult to move on from grotesque practices that so obviously harm, disfigure, injure, in many cases kill, children?” Judith Mulenga posed an interesting question in her speech on harmful practices based on tradition, culture, religion and superstition, a speech that didn’t flinch from challenging the justifications for the wide range of such practices affecting children.
Ms. Mulenga’s presentation, based on a report by the NGO Council published last year, highlighted not only the readily accepted practices, including female genital mutilation and child marriage, but also challenged attempts to legitimise non-therapeutic and non-consensual male circumcision on the basis of a parent’s religious convictions. Echoing statements made in the Human Rights Council this morning, Ms. Mulenga said: “Children are not born into a religion, every individual has the right to religious freedom. Thus, parents and others cannot quote their adult religious beliefs to justify perpetrating harmful practices on a child, before she or he has the capacity to provide informed consent”.