violence against children WORLD REPORT ON - CRIN

90Violence against children in the home and familythat other communities are similarly abandoningthe custom (see box).Child marriage requires similar efforts tochange social and cultural norms. Up to nowthe number of advocacy initiatives to influenceand reduce child marriages directly havebeen very few. The tendency has been to regardthe custom as susceptible to the wider enrolmentof girls in education, and to the legislativeenforcement of marriage laws. However, moreconcerted attention to women’s and girls’ rightsin marriage has led in new directions. Someprogrammes specifically directed at child marriagereduction are now underway, and targetedadvocacy against the practice is beginning. 206For example, a campaign against child marriagehas recently been launched by civil societyorganisations in Yemen, on the basis of researchundertaken by the University of Sana’a. 207Many other practices which cause violenceand harm to children need the benefit of exposureand campaigning as part of the efforts toprevent them. These include the sale of childreninto sexual or other work; the stigmatisationof disabled children, children withoutfamilies, or children orphaned by HIV/AIDS;child victims of sexual abuse; children accusedof sorcery; children who have been dedicatedby their parents to priests and shrines.Improving information forpolicy development and actionAccurate and reliable data on the magnitudeand consequences of family violence againstchildren are essential to evidence-based advocacy,policy development, resource allocationand programme implementation. The lack ofdata has been a constant refrain throughoutthe Study, and nowhere has this been moreacute than in the home and family context,particularly because of the already describedinhibitions to reporting, but also because of thelack of investment in scientific research on thetopic. On the one hand, no effective systems ofresponse can be developed without proper data;on the other, the development of programmaticresponses to children suffering violence cannotawait the development of systematic data-gatheringsystems where country or State capacitiesin this context are limited or under-resourced.Ongoing data collection and analysis of officiallyreported cases can be useful for identifyingtrends in service utilisation and, in someinstances, prevalence. However, as these systemsrely only on cases brought to the attentionof the authorities, and given that children mostoften suffer family violence without tellinganyone, surveillance systems based on officialrecords will always underestimate the extent ofthe problem. Surveillance of officially reportedcases must be supplemented by populationbasedsurveys that document exposure to childhoodviolence and its lifelong consequences.Similary, true understanding of fatal violenceagainst children can only be gained throughcomprehensive death registration, investigationand reporting systems (see box).Small qualitative studies and studies usingconvenience sampling – of families referred tosocial services, for example – are important fordocumenting the problem of violence againstchildren and how to manage it. However, tobegin to understand fully the patterns of family