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Summary: Worldwide progress towards eliminating corporal punishment: all regions support action to end legalised violence against children.
WORLDWIDE PROGRESS TOWARDS ELIMINATING CORPORAL PUNISHMENT: ALL REGIONS SUPPORT ACTION TO END LEGALISED VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN BRIEFING FOR UN GENERALASSEMBLY OCTOBER 2005 At last, societies are recognising children’s right to equal protection from being hit and humiliated. Hitting people is wrong – and children are people too. Corporal punishment of children breaches their fundamental rights to respect for their human dignity and physical integrity. Its legality breaches their right to equal protection under the law. These rights are upheld for everyone – including children – in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) re-emphasises that children, too, are holders of human rights. The Convention requires states to protect children from “all forms of physical or mental violence” while in the care of parents or others (article 19). The Committee on the Rights of the Child – the monitoring treaty body for the CRC - consistently interprets the Convention as requiring prohibition of all corporal punishment, including in the family, linked to awareness-raising and public education. This interpretation is supported by other human rights Treaty Bodies, both international and regional, and by high-level court judgments in a growing number of states. States’ human rights obligations to end all currently legalised violence against children are clear and immediate; there can be no justification for delay. Humanity and logic suggest that children should be the first, not the last, members of human societies to be effectively protected from assault and deliberate humiliation. The case against corporal punishment does not have to be proved. We do not look for evidence of harm to justify prohibition and other measures to end domestic violence against women or elderly people. The issue is one of fundamental rights. But in any case there is overwhelming evidence to support the human rights imperative for eliminating corporal punishment. Hitting babies and children is dangerous. Harsh and humiliating forms of discipline are associated with the development of violent and anti-social attitudes and actions in childhood and later life and also with psychological difficulties for the victims. Hitting children is a lesson in bad behaviour; it teaches them that adults who demand their respect believe that violence is a legitimate way to sort out conflicts or impose authority. GLOBAL PROGRESS TOWARDS ENDING ALL CORPORAL PUNISHMENT - All nine of the Regional Consultations held in 2005 for the UN Secretary General’s Study on Violence against Children recommended prohibition of all corporal punishment - 17 states have prohibited all corporal punishment, including in the family - 100 states have prohibited school corporal punishment and 97 have prohibited corporal punishment in their penal systems for young offenders - Seven European states are committed to abolition in the near future; there are bills to prohibit all corporal punishment before parliament in four Latin American countries, in Canada and New Zealand - For more than a decade, the Committee on the Rights of the Child has consistently interpreted the CRC as requiring prohibition and other measures to eliminate all corporal punishment - Other human rights treaty bodies, including the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Human Rights Committee and the Committee Against Torture have condemned corporal punishment of children - Networks of children’s ombudspeople in Europe and Latin America have called on governments to reform their laws urgently to give children equal protection