Asia-Pacific, Headlines, Human Rights

RIGHTS-ASIA: Corporal Punishment to Get the Boot from Homes, Schools

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jun 16 2005 (IPS) - Child rights activists are holding out hope for children across East Asia and the Pacific that the days of corporal punishment and other forms of violence they are subject to in their homes may someday come to an end.

To achieve such change, both adult and adolescent activists threw their weight behind a series of recommendations that came at the end of a three-day meeting here. Key among them is the need to transform the attitudes of parents, communities and, most importantly, governments about punishing children.

The 250 participants from over 15 countries at the regional meeting to stop violence against children also declared that corporal punishment should be banned in the home and in schools.

”Parents need support in order to better understand issues of violence against children, and (they need) to develop non-violent parenting skills,” adds the final document that came out of the meet Thursday.

”We are not against the responsibility of parents; we just feel that corporal punishment and the use of emotional abuse (of children) is a wrong way of going about it,” Anupama Rao Singh, regional director for the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) East Asia and Pacific office, told reporters.

”Discipline is not about beating. You can discipline by not beating a child’s body,” added Dominique Plateau of the Save the Children Alliance, an umbrella group of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) championing the rights of children.

Children, he implied, have been the victims of society’s contradictory attitudes toward violence. ”What is at stake is to give children equal status before the law. At the moment what you have is it is illegal to beat an adult, but it is okay to beat children.”

According to Vitit Muntabhorn, a Thai professor of law and leading child rights expert, the issues related to violence against children can no longer be classified as concern only for a family or community; it consequently can no longer be shielded from public criticism.

”Violence against children cannot be seen as a private matter. It has to be seen as a public issue given the human rights implications,” he explained during an interview. ”Of course this is going to be a challenge: the law creeping into the family setting.”

The Bangkok meeting, which drew teenage participants along with government, academics and NGO representatives, was the sixth in a series of regional meetings being held across the globe to gather information for a U.N.-sponsored global report on violence against children.

This special U.N. report, to be released during the world body’s General Assembly in October 2006, will inevitably hold governments to task for failing in their commitment to protect their youngest citizens from domestic violence that is pervasive.

After all, 192 governments have ratified the landmark international treaty to protect and uphold the rights of children, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

Article 19 of the CRC notes the responsibility governments have to take legal, administrative, social and educational measures to ”protect the child from all forms of physical and mental violence, injury or abuse” while in the care of ”parent(s)” or ”legal guardian(s).”

Yet the reality in East Asia and the Pacific reveal the daunting task that lies ahead to make that pledge appear meaningful to children.

Information revealed during the conference stated that in Cambodia, for instance, over 50 percent of boys and more than 36 percent of girls surveyed said they had been beaten by their parents.

In Fiji, corporal punishment in homes is still considered as ”customary,” noted a UNICEF background note. ”In many families it is considered appropriate for the husband or father to ‘discipline’ his wife and children in a physical manner.”

Another survey conducted by UNICEF confirmed that 23 percent of the children in East Asia and the Pacific admitted that ”their parents beat them when they do something wrong.”

The countries grouped in this region range from Australia and New Zealand and the Pacific Island nations, such as Fiji, to East Asian ones that include China, Mongolia, Thailand and Burma.

And in most of them, where a strict social hierarchy prevails, ”children are not expected to question or challenge adults and if they do, such actions can be perceived by an adult as resulting in a loss of ‘face’,” according to UNICEF.

Yet one adolescent conference participant declared that such a status quo must end. ”It is time to break this cycle of violence,” 17-year-old Samuela Ralawa Raika from Fiji told IPS. ”I will tell my parents that the traditional view of corporal punishment is not right.”

Raika’s passion to combat such domestic abuse stems from his own personal pain. He is a victim himself of corporal punishment in his home. ”It is wrong. And stopping it has to start in the family.”