UN
Peace Day 2009: Peace for the children
14 September 2009 - As Peace Day 21 September approaches UNAMA is featuring articles from UN agencies on the work the UN is doing for peace in Afghanistan. 5: The United Nations Children's Fund - UNICEF
No violence against children is justifiable, and all violence against children is preventable.
Peace in a country depends on the people who are living in it. Children are the beginning of the future. Only if they experience a childhood without violence will they be able to fulfill our shared hope for peace.
Violence against children exists all over the world. It cuts across boundaries of culture, class, education, income, ethnic origin and age.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by the Government of Afghanistan, clearly highlights the right of the child to a life free of violence.
An educational system that respects this principle is the cornerstone of a society in peace and progress. However, violence against pupils continues to be present in Afghanistan from two points of view – violence against schools and violence in schools.
After several years of progress, education in Afghanistan has been set back due to an increasing number of attacks on schools, perpetrated by anti-government elements.
Since 2001 the country has made a major push to improve access to education, especially for girls. Almost one million Afghan children, nearly all of them boys, attended school back then. Over six million pupils, including two million girls, are enrolled today yet enrollment rates have deteriorated since 2008, reversing the trend of improvement.
The scheme of attack is twofold: Explosive devices target schools to destroy infrastructure and indiscriminately kill pupils and teachers. The most recent attack occurred on 9 July in Logar district, claiming the life of 25 people, including 15 children. And secondly acid is thrown by insurgents on female students.
In 2009, numerous threats of this kind have been accounted for, making parents afraid to send their daughters to school. UNICEF is strongly condemning any attack against schools.
Upon the request of the General Assembly, a study on all forms of violence against children was published in 2006 on the worst child right violations, resulting in UN Security Council Resolution 1612.
This further led to the establishment in 2008 of the Afghanistan Country Task Force co-chaired by the UNICEF and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) to monitor, report and respond to severe child-right violations in armed conflict.
A baseline study conducted in Jalalabad in October 2008 by the Save the Children Sweden-Norway indicates that the use of violence against children by teachers continues to be a common practice in schools, with verbal abuse being the most prevalent form.
Here is the voice of a 10-year old girl who participated in the assessment: “The teacher made me stand in front of my own class, before taking me to other classes, telling them that I am a lazy girl, not memorizing the lesson nor doing my homework. That day, I was weeping all day. I felt so alone and degraded.”
According to the assessment, children were physically punished in all the observed boy-schools and in 20 per cent of girl-schools.
Over 50 per cent of teachers were not aware of the ban on physical and humiliating punishment and believed that they had the right to beat their students. On the other hand, the teachers who were aware continued to beat the pupils, believing that physical punishment was an essential practice to maintain discipline.
“One day, some of us played and made the classroom dusty. This resulted in our teacher beating all students with a rubber pipe. He only stopped beating when he got tired. It was not the fault of all students!” a 13-year old boy complained to the Save Team.
In all observed schools, older children used their power to intimidate and harm younger children. Sexual abuse could be found at alarming rates in boy-schools.
So far, insufficient action has been taken to respond to violence against children in school, be it authorized through discipline committees, or unauthorized – rape of boys by teachers.
To protect children is essential to build peace – it is one of UNICEF’s core priorities in Afghanistan.
UNICEF and other child-right organizations are working closely together in order to make peace come true. Activities underway include the educating of children on their rights, the raising of awareness on the ban on and negative consequences of physical and humiliating punishment, the training of teachers on child protection principles, the development of a code of conduct for teachers and students, and a related mechanism of reporting and monitoring when this code is violated.
Child Protection Action Networks which are now present in 23 provinces have been a key asset in this effort.
There is growing recognition of the impact of violence on the mental and physical health and well-being of children throughout their lives. Therefore, preventing violence against children addresses a host of longer-term problems or a substantial social and economic burden on the country.
There can be no compromise in challenging violence against children. Extreme forms of violence against children provoke increasingly a consensus of condemnation, internationally and in Afghanistan. Yet violence in and against schools continues, with devastating consequences for children’s lives and well-being – and herewith the future of Afghanistan.
The school must be a child-friendly place – a space where children learn to live without violence and are free from abuse.
Family units are the key providers of physical and emotional care for children. Schools have a fundamental role in ensuring the development of children’s potentials. Yet it is the Government’s responsibility to build a framework that ensures the protection that is needed by teachers, families and communities to adequately fulfill their role.
Under the leadership of the Government of Afghanistan, UNICEF and its partners provide assistance whenever needed. But increased efforts will be necessary to eliminate violence against all children in this country – allowing them to survive and thrive.
By continually working together in 2009 and beyond, we can achieve the goal of freeing schools from violence and freeing children from violence all over the country.
By Catherine Mbengue, UNICEF Afghanistan Representative
