The Solutions Summit aims to raise awareness of SDG 16.2, showcase solutions from around the world and celebrate successes so far in Pathfinding countries. This report, Ending legalised violence against children by 2030: Progress towards prohibition and elimination of corporal punishment in Pathfinder countries, highlights the centrality of ending corporal punishment to achieving SDG 16.2 and related targets and for each Pathfinding country, it sets out:

• The current legal status of corporal punishment, any changes needed to achieve full prohibition, and any current opportunities for law reform;
• Whether the government has committed to achieving prohibition;
• Any prevalence data and examples of good practice;
• Relevant recommendations from UN and regional treaty monitoring bodies.

Download the report.

The post New report tracks progress in Pathfinding countries first appeared on End Corporal Punishment of Children.

Designed to encourage and support action, the report also highlights the work that remains to be done – the states where corporal punishment is not fully prohibited in any setting, the states where corporal punishment remains lawful as a sentence for crime, and the number of children worldwide that do not enjoy equal protection under the law on assault.

Finally, the report provides an update on the work of the Global Initiative, and looks forward to what is coming up in 2018.

Download the report.

The post Global report tracking progress to December 2017 is out now! first appeared on End Corporal Punishment of Children.

The report highlights new campaigns and movements to end all violence against children, faith-based advocacy for reform to end corporal punishment, and ever-mounting research making visible this most common form of violence against children. The report also highlights the shortcomings of the past decade – the states where corporal punishment is not fully prohibited in any setting, the states where corporal punishment remains lawful as a sentence for crime, and the states that experienced setbacks in the journey towards prohibition of corporal punishment in 2016.

Designed to encourage and support action, the report sets out what still needs to be done to end all corporal punishment of children globally, and how to do it.

Download the full report here.

A limited number of hard copies is available for advocacy use, contact info@endcorporalpunishment.org.

The post Global report 2016 is out now first appeared on End Corporal Punishment of Children.

This latest global progress report from the Global Initiative and Save the Children charts the growth in the list of states prohibiting, and making a commitment to prohibiting, all corporal punishment. It considers prohibition and elimination of corporal punishment in the context of the new Sustainable Development Goals, particularly target 16.2 under which states have committed to work to “End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children”. It also describes growing faith-based advocacy for reform and ever mounting research making visible this most common form of violence against children.

Packed with facts and figures – the good and the bad – as well as setting out the relevant international human rights standards and what the obligation to protect children from corporal punishment means in terms of law reform, this report is intended to provoke and support continued advocacy on the issue.

It is exciting to hear from the Global Initiative that we have reached a new tipping point: more than half of all UN member states have either prohibited all corporal punishment of children (48 states), or clearly committed to do so (another 52 states – making a total of 100). Now we have the additional context of full global commitment to new Sustainable Development Goals and targets – including the adopted target 16.2 to end ‘all forms of violence against children’ by 2030: this has to include the prohibition and elimination of violent punishment of children, the most common and pervasive form of violence against them in the family – and in many states also in schools and other settings.”

Benyam Dawit Mezmur, Chair, Committee on the Rights of the Child; Chair, African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, in Ending legalised violence against children: global progress to December 2015

The full report is available here.

A limited number of hard copies is available for advocacy use, contact info@endcorporalpunishment.org.

The post Global report 2015 is now available first appeared on End Corporal Punishment of Children.

The post Independent evaluation of the Global Initiative first appeared on End Corporal Punishment of Children.

This new report by the Global Initiative, published jointly with Save the Children, charts progress towards prohibition of corporal punishment in schools and identifies the states where progress is not being made. The report sets out the human rights standards relating to prohibition of corporal punishment, summarises research documenting the continued use of corporal punishment in schools and together with extracts from national legislation authorising corporal punishment as well as from laws prohibiting it, describes how laws can be reformed to achieve abolition.

There is information on implementing prohibition in practice and on national and international campaigns on the issue. Identifying immediate opportunities for law reform in at least 46 of the 73 states where prohibition has not yet been fully achieved in schools, the report is both a call to action to end violent punishment of children in all places of learning and a tool for advocacy to make this happen through law reform and other measures.

As Professor Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, the Independent Expert who led the UN Study, writes in the Foreword to the report:

“Can anything be more anti-educational than deliberately using violence to discipline children? …”

Towards non-violent schools: prohibiting all corporal punishment, Global report 2015 – published in English and in Spanish and launched at the 6th World Congress on School Violence and Public Policies in Lima, Peru, May 2015 – is available here (in English and Spanish).

A limited number of hard copies is available for advocacy purposes, email info@endcorporalpunishment.org.

The post New global report on prohibiting corporal punishment in schools first appeared on End Corporal Punishment of Children.

These are just a few of the laws in the 38 states identified in this new report where children may be lawfully flogged, whipped and caned under secular, religious and/or customary systems of justice. The report, published by the Global Initiative and Save the Children for the 2015 World Congress on Juvenile Justice, to be held in Geneva 26-30 January, also identifies the many immediate opportunities for achieving prohibition of these barbaric practices, and describes international and national advocacy for abolition – including medical opposition to the unethical involvement of doctors in the administration of cruel punishments. As Professor Paulo Pinheiro – the Independent Expert who led the UN Secretary General’s Study on Violence against Children – states in his message to the report:

“How can these states, 25 years after adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, continue to ignore their international obligations and maintain these barbaric practices? For many children, I fear we are barely at the starting point in respecting their human dignity: we must all redouble explicit advocacy.”

The full report is available here.

For hard copies and further information, contact info@endcorporalpunishment.org.

The post New report on corporal punishment and juvenile justice first appeared on End Corporal Punishment of Children.

This latest global progress report from the Global Initiative and Save the Children charts the growth in the list of states prohibiting, and making a commitment to prohibiting, all corporal punishment. It describes growing faith-based advocacy for reform and ever more systematic and rigorous research making visible this form of violence which children face on a daily basis. Packed with facts and figures – the good and the bad – as well as setting out the relevant international human rights standards and what the obligation to protect children from corporal punishment means in terms of law reform, it is intended to provoke and support continued advocacy on the issue.

“The best birthday gift children could get for the 25th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is a life free from violence. It is absurd that adults in most countries are allowed to use physical punishment in the upbringing of children, who are so much smaller than them. It is also absurd that children have to accept violence from those they love most and who should be the persons they should really be able to trust and feel safe with. I am thinking about all forms of violence, including the smallest slap or pinch. The 25th anniversary is a golden occasion for states to prohibit corporal punishment against children in all settings, and to educate parents and other caregivers in alternative ways of raising children. Children have the right to be treated well and need to learn that violence does not solve any problems.”

(Kirsten Sandberg, Chair, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, in Ending legalised violence against children: global progress to December 2014)

The full report is available here.

For hard copies and further information, contact info@endcorporalpunishment.org.

The post Global Report 2014 now available first appeared on End Corporal Punishment of Children.

The urgent message of the report is that almost all West and Central African states have current opportunities to fulfil their human rights obligations to prohibit all corporal punishment of children in all settings of their lives. Aiming to promote immediate action on these many opportunities for prohibition, the report documents the legal status of corporal punishment and the reforms needed to achieve prohibition in all West and Central African states and provides guidance on the process of law reform.

In a message in the report, Benyam Dawit Mezmur, Chair of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and Vice-Chairperson of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, says,

“In Africa, to date only six states have prohibited corporal punishment of children in all settings, including in the home; among the West and Central African states covered in this report, only Togo, Cabo Verde and the Republic of Congo have fully prohibited corporal punishment.

“But encouragingly we know that other states in these regions are publicly committed to a complete ban and in some cases have prepared the necessary draft legislation. We look forward to the enactment of such laws….

“Creating an Africa fit for children cannot be achieved in an environment where some of our laws and practices condone violence against children.”

The report is available here (English and French).

Hard copies are available from info@endcorporalpunishment.org.

The post New report highlights opportunities for prohibition in West and Central Africa first appeared on End Corporal Punishment of Children.

The post New UNICEF reports make violent punishment visible first appeared on End Corporal Punishment of Children.