NEW: Read the Q&A on the need for a Special Representative as follow-up mechanism.
The UN Study on Violence against Children will look at violence committed against children across the world and what can be done about it. The Study is scheduled to be published in 2006.
1. Who asked for the Study and why is it happening?
2. Who will be in charge of the Study and who else will be involved?
3. How will the Study be done?
4. What will the Study look at?
5. What does violence against children include?
6. Where does violence occur?
7. What will the Study achieve?
8. How can children and young people be involved?
9. What will happen at the end of the Study?
1. Who asked for the Study and why is it happening?
This Study was suggested by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. The Committee thought that more should be done to prevent violence and to protect and help children who face violence. They hope that a Study can help find ideas to stop violence against children.
The Committee wrote a letter to the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. The Secretary-General took the letter to the UN General Assembly where governments from all countries of the world are represented. These governments then agreed to ask the Secretary-General to appoint an independent expert to be in charge of the Study.
Find out more about the background to the Study here.
2. Who will be in charge of the Study and who else will be involved?
An independent expert was appointed to lead the study. His name is Paulo Sergio Pinheiro and he is a human rights expert and professor from Brazil. He will work with a small team in Geneva, in Switzerland, called a Secretariat.
He will be helped by three UN organisations:
- The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
- The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
- The World Health Organisation (WHO)
Paulo Pinheiro will also work with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, other parts of the UN, governments, international and national organisations, especially those that look at the rights of children.
The Study will look at other work that has been done about violence, including the World Report on Violence and Health from the WHO. It will also use the experience and research of organisations that have worked to protect and help children who face violence. Paulo Pinheiro and organisations working with him think it is very important that children are actively involved in the Study.
3. How will the Study be done?
The Study will rely on research about violence against children that has already been done. It aims to bring together in one place what we know now. It will, for example, use information from the UN General Assembly Special Session on Children. Official statistics from the UN and other organisations, such as UNICEF, will also be used. If gaps in knowledge are found, research can then be carried out on new or neglected issues.
Countries will be encouraged to carry out a national review to consider carefully everything that they are doing about violence against children. It should include how many children are facing violence and what laws exist, and other ways to protect children. After the review each country should have statistics and a full picture of the extent of violence against children in their country.
To help governments with the national review the Secretariat of the Study will send out a questionnaire (a list of questions). These questionnaires will ask questions about the law and plans that governments have to stop violence against children.
Each region of the world will be holding a consultation — a meeting to discuss violence against children in that region. The regions are:
- East Asia and Pacific
- South Asia
- Eastern and Southern Africa
- West and Central Africa
- Middle East and North Africa
- Europe and Central Asia
- North America
- Latin America
- The Caribbean
The regional consultations will gather together representatives of governments, UN agencies, and NGOs. These meetings will also be an opportunity for children to work together with UN agencies, such as UNICEF, and NGOs to make sure their voices are heard and taken into account.
National reviews and regional consultations can be used to make sure that countries pay attention to the problem of violence against children. All countries and regions will be asked to share ideas on what to do to prevent violence against children and to better protect them. As part of this, developing countries, for example in Africa, Asia, and South America, can share good ideas with other developing countries. The Study will lead to networks being set up that help find and make known good ways of dealing with violence against children and to help children who have faced violence to rebuild their lives.
The independent expert, Paulo Pinheiro, will also visit countries to look at what governments are doing to prevent violence and protect children.
4. What will the Study look at?
Many girls and boys around the world face violence in their daily lives. There are many types of violence experienced by children in different ways in different regions of the world. It occurs in cities and the countryside, within families, schools, places of work and on the streets.
The World Health Organisation’s World Report on Violence and Health has tried to say what violence means, and this Study will use the same definition. Violence is:
“The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.”
This Study focuses on violence that happens when someone uses their strength or their position of power to hurt someone else on purpose, not by accident. Violence includes threats, and acts which could possibly cause harm, as well as those that actually do. The harm can be to a person’s feelings, their mind, or their general health and wellbeing, as well as to their body. It also means harm people do to themselves, including killing themselves.
5. What does violence against children include?
For this Study, children are: everyone under the age of 18.
For this Study, violence against children is:
- All forms of physical or mental violence, injury and abuse (harming your body or harming your mind)
- Neglect or bad treatment
- Maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse and exploitation (such as child prostitution)
- Trafficking (sale and trading) of children
- Child abuse is any form of violence against children when it is done by someone who is responsible for them, or has power over them, that they should be able to trust (such as parents, other close family or teachers).
The study will look at all the different places where there is violence against children, and will make a special effort to find good ways to prevent violence or deal with it when it happens. It will pay special attention to violence against children within the family. This means not just violence done by parents but also by anyone else who might be thought of as part of a child’s family. The extended family includes grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and others. Violence by brothers and sisters is also included.
Finding out about how families and communities protect children is an important goal of the Study; but there are also certain customs that are harmful to children, especially girls, which are included as a kind of violence against children within the family. For example:
- female genital mutilation (cutting of a girl’s sexual parts)
- child sexual abuse, including girls married very young or being forced to marry;
- honour killings, where men kill girls in the name of family 'honour', for example for having sex outside marriage, or refusing an arranged marriage.
Violence happens in public and private places, such as in:
- schools
- religious institutions (including military schools)
- the street
- children’s homes andorphanages
- community detention facilities and in prisons
- in sport
- the workplace
- in gangs
The study will also consider violence that children can face when they are in trouble with the law or police, for example when they get arrested. It will look at the use of physical punishment and the death penalty, as well as torture and degrading treatment.
The only form of violence that the Study will not look at is the violence caused by war or armed conflict. This type of violence against children was reported on in the 1996 report on Impact of Armed Conflict on Children.
For more information, see our section on Forms of Violence
7. What will the Study achieve?
The Study aims to help to improve the situation for children. It will do this by bringing worldwide attention to the daily abuse of children. It will also publicise ways in which children who face violence can be helped and how violence can be prevented in the first place. Because of the importance of the Study, and because the Study will try to attract a lot of attention to the problems and solutions related to violence, it is hoped that governments will be convinced to make more effort to stop violence against children.
At the end of the Study there should be ideas for:
- how things can be improved so that there is less violence against children at home and in families, in schools, and in the community
- what laws can do to help stop violence and protect children who face violence.
- why different types of violence are happening and what can be done to prevent violence and to protect children from it. Children’s own ideas on prevention and protection will be an important part of the Study.
- what governments, the UN and other organisations can do to help children who have suffered violence.
- what children themselves, as well as their families and communities, can do to stop violence.
- how boys and men, as well as girls and women, can help make changes to prevent violence against children
- what is working and what is not working to stop violence against children.
These ideas will be for governments all over the world, international organisations including the UN and community-based organisations. Ways of working that have been successful in preventing violence and protecting children will be shared across the world so that we can all learn from them.
By encouraging children to talk about their experiences and views on violence the Study will help to increase understanding. This also helps governments, the UN and everybody to think of ways that will work better to protect children from violence.
Children will be able to share their own ideas and make plans to help themselves. They will also be able to learn from other children from other countries about their experiences and how they have dealt with violence in their own environment.
8. How can children be involved?
At the UN Special Session on Children adults have seen how children can be involved in big international projects. Children’s organisations such as UNICEF have also involved children in research and training of other children. This Study will build on that work and make sure that children’s voices are heard.
How will children participate in the Study?
- By sharing their experiences and views
- In planning for the Study
- In national and regional meetings
- As researchers
- By looking at what the information collected means
- By promoting the messages from the Study
- In helping to create websites and other ways of telling people about the Study and getting people involved in the Study.
Plans will be made to make sure that children are safe when participating in the Study. For example:
- Only children who WANT to participate will be involved
- The parents or community in which children live will need to agree that the children may participate
- If children participate in the Study or its related activities, what they say in confidence will not be shared with others
- If children talk about abuse, they need to know that they can get help, and that the organisers may have to report this to the authorities after discussing it with the child
Find out more about children's involvement here.
9. What will happen after the Study?
The Study will come up with ideas and plans for making things better for children who face violence. These ideas will be for governments, the UN and other organisations. Because children will be involved in the Study, they can also help put the ideas and plans into action.
The independent expert Paulo Pinheiro will write a report that will be sent to the Secretary-General of the UN in 2006 (date moved forward from 2005). The report will be given to governments and other parts of the UN such as the Commission on Human Rights. After that, a big book will be published, along with a report especially written for children.
Download the original Q&A as a pdf in English, Français and Español.
