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[May 2012] - Caribbean experts including religious leaders unite in calling for an end to corporal punishment of children in their homes, schools and all other places in this new report following up the UN Secretary General’s Study on Violence against Children, published in May 2012 by the Global Initiative in collaboration with the Global Movement for Children in Latin America and the Caribbean. This 64-page report – Prohibiting corporal punishment of children in the Caribbean: Progress report 2012 – charts progress and delay in prohibiting and eliminating this form of violence against children in the region. It describes research showing the nature and extent of corporal punishment in Caribbean countries and reveals the high level of support among faith groups and others for its abolition. The report sets out the human rights obligation to protect children from all forms of corporal punishment and other cruel or degrading punishment and the steps needed to enact and enforce laws to prohibit it. With detailed individual reports on every state and territory in the Caribbean, the report is an invaluable resource for all those concerned with ending violence against children. Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, Independent Expert who led the UN Study on violence against children, in a message to the Jamaica conference on follow up to the Study, at which the report will be launched, says: “Seven years have passed since the Caribbean Regional Consultation for the UN Study, held in Trinidad in 2005. Some of you were with me there to hear young people describing the daily violence suffered in their homes, in the institutions and schools established to ‘care for and ‘educate’ them. Violence has no place in children’s lives; violence is not caring and violence is anti-educational. We have repeated endlessly the mantra of the Study Report: ‘No violence against children is justifiable; all violence against children is preventable.’… Violence cannot be dignified or justified by reference to faith or religion; increasingly, this is accepted in relation to violence against women, and it must be accepted in relation to children…. I commend to you the Global Initiative’s report on progress towards eliminating it in this region, to be launched at the conference. I am delighted to see the impressive lists in the report of unequivocal support for banning and eliminating it from prominent Caribbeans and from many NGOs and human rights institutions across the region.” The full report is available here (and see flyer). For hard copies and further information, contact [email protected]. Further Information: