February 13, 2010
The Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children has launched a new website for children.
This comprehensive site contains information about children campaigning to end corporal punishment in many countries.
It also contains useful resources to help children and adults campaign together against corporal punishment.
The debate in New Zealand about the use of physical punishment of children and law change involved limited but valuable and important opportunities for children to participate.
The new website reports on the New Zealand debate.
What sort of sense do children make of being smacked and hit? Are children aware that they have rights to safety and physical integrity? What do children think of laws that “excuse” assault of children (excused by some people as an adult’s right to chose how to discipline their child).
Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child advises that State Parties shall assure to the child which is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting that child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.
Physical punishment is absolutely a matter that affects children.
January 22, 2010
A recent report published by the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children provides information about world wide progress towards universal prohibition of all corporal (physical) punishment of children.
There are now 26 countries which have enacted laws prohibiting corporal punishment of children in all settings. New Zealand is, of course, one of these. In many other countries there are positive commitments and campaigns underway. The report provides extensive information on the status of countries world-wide.
In New Zealand it is many years since physical punishment was legal in settings other than the home (banned in 2007) but in some parts of the world children are still beaten in schools, penal institutions and alternative care settings and are the victims of outdated, inhumane and violent practices.
Introductory messages to the Report from Marta Santos Pias (Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on Violence against Children), Professor Yanghee Lee (Chairperson, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child) and Professor Paulo Sergio Pinheiro (previously the Independent Expert who led the UN Secretary General’s Study On Violence against Children) all make it clear that respect for children’s human rights to dignity and physical integrity through the banning of corporal punishment is a critical part of protecting children from all violence.
Children’s human right to dignity, physical integrity and full protection from violence are the fundamental underpinnings of a legal ban on use of force in the correction of children. All too often this fact gets lost as New Zealanders debate parent’s perceived right to discipline their children as they see fit and the irrelevant question of whether a small smack does any harm.
