Violence against children - its causes, types and how to protect the child from it

Violence against children - its causes, types and how to protect the child from it

 Violence

It is any act or saying that harms others, whether psychologically or physically, such as uttering obscene words, abusing a child, imposing an opinion by force, or physical assault by beating, for example.

Violence is often practiced by a person known to a child, who are mothers, fathers, family, and school teachers, and there is a very small percentage of acts of violence, exploitation, and harm that are investigated by child protection agencies, and few perpetrators are held accountable.

The phenomenon of violence is one of the most important issues that require stopping and paying attention to it by government agencies and from a family point of view, knowing its causes and confronting it. intact.

Types of violence

• Domestic violence: It is an attempt to violate human and child rights through violence against him, and an attempt to impose penalties on him or restrict his freedom and impose opinions by force to control him.
• Physical Violence: Deliberate practice of violence towards a child to harm him.
• Psychological violence: behavior by an individual or group of people who have power and control that affects the psychological, behavioral, mental, or physical aspects of a child, such as humiliation, imposing opinions, exploitation, and isolation.
• Neglect: It is the failure to meet the basic needs of a child with an intentional or unintended purpose, such as the mother's lack of interest in the child's eating, clothing, or fulfilling his requests.
• Sexual exploitation: It is the practice of forced sex between an adult and a child without the child realizing the nature of this relationship or his consent, such as exposing the genitals, touching or sexual advances, and others.
• Violence in schools: It refers to the practice of violence between the teacher and the student or between the students themselves. School violence is one of the most widespread phenomena that requires attention and attention, as it hurts children's behavior, education, and social and emotional impact.

Violence against children in Schools

Schools have a great and important role in protecting children from violence, but many educational environments such as schools expose children to violence by practicing individual or collective punishment such as beating, verbal insults, and other punishments that harm the child physically, psychologically, behaviorally and socially, although 102 countries have banned violence Against children in schools, however, many do not abide by the laws that care for children and seek to protect them from violence to grow in a healthy environment. Violence is often due to racial discrimination related to the child's environment such as a poor or marginalized family, or due to personal characteristics such as physical or mental disability.

The causes of violence against children

• The economic conditions of the family, increased unemployment and limited income.
• Social reasons such as family disintegration.
• Misconceptions about the child's upbringing: such as the use of physical and verbal violence and the lack of awareness of the proper upbringing of the child.
• Television and media programs that are not aimed contribute to the consolidation of violence in the child's mind, which affects his behavior.
• The absence of laws that help protect children or their application, and the absence of a mandatory reporting of violence.

Means of reducing violence against children in schools

• Searching for the real reason behind the violence of the child who practices violence or the abuser, and trying to find the cause and treat it.
• Activating the role of the social counselor in schools to reduce violent practices.
• Activating laws that work to protect children within international human rights and children's conventions.
• Monitoring these practices and working on the legal issue of any act of violence against the child.
• Activating the role of parents with the importance of taking care of the child and providing him with a healthy environment and upbringing without any action that harms his behavior or psyche.
• Work to raise awareness about raising the child in a healthy environment and how to protect him from any information, media, or cartoons that entrench violence in the child's mind.
• Educating the child on the need to know his rights, his sexual organs, and how to protect himself from exploitation.

Child protection from violence

Children, individuals under the age of eighteen, enjoy a set of rights, the most important of which is their right to protection from violence, exploitation, and abuse. A day of various types of violence and abuse, and the most vulnerable to that are children with disabilities, orphans, and those belonging to ethnic minorities and other marginalized groups in society, as nearly 300 million children in the world are exposed to violence and abuse physically, sexually, socially, and psychologically. To the serious impact of violence on the child's health, development, and preserving dignity in various aspects of life.

The role of the family in protecting the child from violence

There are some aspects that families can take into account to protect their children from exposure to violence and physical and psychological abuse, as follows:

• Create an appropriate environment inside the home in which the child's ideas are respected, listened to, solve problems facing him, and provide him with the necessary care.
• Parents treat their children the way they want others to treat their children.
• Teaching the child his right to protection and how to protect himself from violence.
• Encouraging the child to talk about himself and what is going through his mind and what he is going through; To feel that his family is always there for him.

The role of society in protecting children from violence

Members of some communities volunteer to create groups that aim to protect children from violence and achieve prosperity for them in a village or an urban neighborhood. Violence against children can be addressed, reduced in society, or avoided from occurring through a set of community programs and plans as follows:

• Provide general knowledge to adults, explain support and protection tools to them, and how to prevent children from exposure to violence.
• Recognizing the need for both male and female children to be protected from violence.
• Develop, implement, and monitor a community violence prevention program, in collaboration with children, adults, and local community organizations.
• Consulting with groups with diverse cultures to suggest ways and means to address the phenomenon of violence against children and ensure their suitability for society.
• Develop a list of societal rights, with the rights of the child at the fore.
• Create safe, participatory, and fun approaches to preventing violence against children.
• Proposing a comprehensive law to support child protection programs in all places where they are and where they spend a lot of time.
• Evaluation of programs designed to solve the problem of violence against children through official statistics and studies with academic partners.

The role of the state in protecting children from violence

The state can follow a set of plans and programs to protect children from violence and eliminate this phenomenon, including the following:

• Developing a national strategy: Developing an integrated, focused, and time-bound national strategy leads to the elimination and prevention of violence against children, as the necessary steps are taken at government levels so that child protection is a priority, ensuring that those concerned are trained to achieve this, and providing the necessary funding for the success of the strategy.
• Rejection of violence: Efforts must be made to make violence against children socially unacceptable, by raising awareness, building positive standards, and changing beliefs and behaviors based on habits that condone violence or classify it as a form of discipline within the family and in schools into unacceptable beliefs.
• Supporting positive education: Prevention of violence against children can be achieved by supporting families to take care of their children and give them a priority, early childhood care, and development, encouragement to keep children at home and not place them in care institutions, especially children under three years of age where violence affects their proper development during this period of their lives.
• Developing a system to monitor violence against children: Comprehensive data systems should be built to eliminate the phenomenon of violence against children, and tools for the system should be developed to include all children of both sexes and all segments of society to secure their protection.
• Enacting an official law to address violence against children: an explicit official law should be enacted that includes all manifestations of violence against children, taking into account the effective implementation of the law through the judicial systems to provide child protection and support, in addition to setting a set of controls that protect the child from exploitation, and from any work It may endanger him, hinder his learning, or cause harm to his physical or psychological health, and impose penalties on all forms of violence against children, and take appropriate measures to prevent its occurrence