[child-rights] Call to ban corporal punishment wraps up South Africa meeting on violence

Delegates to a preparatory consultation on the UN Study on Violence
Against Children call for a total ban on corporal punishment

JOHANNESBURG, 20 July, 2005 - A three-day preparatory consultation on the
UN Secretary General’s Study on Violence against Children ended today with
a call for a total ban on corporal punishment.

Noting that the practice was a violation of children’s rights, the over
300 government, NGO and child representatives from Eastern and Southern
Africa said hitting children contravened the UN Convention on the Rights
of the Child and was harmful to the healthy development of children. They
called for home-grown alternatives to corporal punishment.

“Hitting or smacking children is a type of violence,” said the Independent
Expert on the UN Study Professor Paulo Sergio Pinheiro. “Violence used as
a means of discipline, despite its devastating effects on the child,
should never be viewed as legally or culturally acceptable.”

Delegates observed that despite most countries in eastern and southern
Africa outlawing corporal punishment to some degree, it remained prevalent
in homes, where it is hidden from public view and often enjoys legal
protection through civil and customary laws. Where legislation adequately
proscribes the practice, the lack of capacity to monitor violations and
enforce the law means that smacking of children continues largely
unabated.

“Children who grow up in an environment that tolerates physical abuse
eventually learn to accept it as a way of life,” said Peter Newell of the
Global Initiative to End Corporal Punishment of Children. “Hitting
children teaches them bad behaviours.”

In their opening statement at the consultation, the children called for
stiffer penalties against corporal punishment, saying the beatings made
them feel less human. “They make us feel bad about ourselves.”

For many countries, instituting stiffer penalties against corporal
punishment should start with abolishing laws which sanction the practice
in the first place. While it is impractical, if not inimical to the
interests of children, to prosecute every offending parent, the purpose of
law reform, according to Newell, is to set the trend. “A good law will
determine the norms and send the clear message that hitting children is
simply unacceptable.”

For the child delegates at the meeting, violence in schools and in
communities was a frightening and increasing phenomenon. Citing the ills -
teen pregnancies, circumcision of girls, forced marriages, drugs and
substance abuse, sexual abuse and exploitation – the children painted a
disturbing scenario that left many delegates searching for answers.

“The school, a place of learning, has turned into a theatre of nightmares
because there is violence and it is unbearable,” said a child delegate
from Zambia. “How is it that Africa, a continent so rich in resources,
cultures and values, today fails to protect its own children, its present
and future resource?” asked a young refugee from Rwanda.

As well as ending corporal punishment, the consultation discussed the role
of HIV/AIDS and poverty in fuelling violence against children. Recent
trends in Eastern and Southern Africa, the region most affected by
HIV/AIDS, indicate an increasing vulnerability to violence of orphans and
children affected by AIDS. Without the means to ensure basic survival, and
with no recourse to protective social safety nets, many children are
forced into commercial sex trade, child labour, or early marriage.

“We must remember that children struggle everyday to cope with the
pressure that violence brings into their lives,” said Ms. Cheryl Gilwald,
South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Correctional Services. “The true measure
of a nation’s humanity is the respect with which it treats its children.”

Despite the numerous social and economic problems facing many countries in
the region, the general consensus was that a lack of resources was not an
excuse for inaction.

“I cannot think of a more fundamental obligation, a more salient duty than
that of protecting children from violence,” said Dr. Assefa Bequele of the
African Child Policy Forum and a member of the African Union’s Commission
on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.

“In Eastern and Southern Africa, peace, democracy, and freedom are the
three key elements of a conducive environment for children,” said Mr.
Macharia Kamau, UNICEF Representative to South Africa.

Ensuring a safe and protective environment for children in the region will
be key to the continued existence of nations as free democracies. In the
words of one child participant from Angola, “to guarantee the rights of
children is to promote peace.”

UNICEF Press release



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