violence against children WORLD REPORT ON - CRIN

4human rights and the EFA goals, and widelyendorsed by international organisations. Mostimportantly, it answers children and youngadults around the world who say they want theviolence to stop.The basic principles of a rights-based childfriendlyschool are that it should be 166,167 :1. Proactively inclusive. The school seeksout and enables the participation of allchildren of both sexes, and especially thosewho are different ethnically, culturally,linguistically, socio-economically and intheir abilities or disabilities.2. Academically effective and relevant. Itmeets children’s needs for life and livelihoodknowledge, attitudes and skills.3. Gender-sensitive. It creates environmentsthat foster gender equality, and it meetsthe needs for knowledge, attitudes andskills that ensure gender equality.4. Healthy and protective. It promotes andprotects children’s emotional, psychologicaland physical well-being by providing ahealthy and protective educational climate.5. Engaged with the family and the community.It seeks out and enables the participationof children’s families and thecommunity in the development and implementationof all aspects of school policiesand programmes, including those designedto protect children from harm and to teachchildren to appreciate the rights of otherchildren to the same protection.Laws and law enforcementInternational conventions, regional agreementsand national laws that address corporal punishment,sexual harassment and assault, andother forms of violence are essential steps in themovement toward violence-free schools. Experiencehas shown, however, that many countriesare slow to meet their international and regionalobligations and slow to enforce their own laws.Since the UN General Assembly adopted theCRC in 1989, a substantial number of countrieshave taken steps to ban corporal punishmentin schools, even though they have oftenbeen lax in enforcing their laws. High-levelcourts in many regions and countries includingNamibia (Supreme Court, 1991), SouthAfrica (Constitutional Court, 2000) and inthe courts of various parts of federal countries– for example, Delhi, India (Delhi HighCourt, 2000), and Canada (Supreme Court,2004) 169 – have condemned corporal punishmentin schools and required its prohibition.The Committee on the Rights of the Childnotes in its recent General Comment No.8: “Where, despite prohibition and positiveeducation and training programmes, cases ofcorporal punishment come to light outsidethe family home – in schools, other institutionsand forms of alternative care for example– prosecution may be a reasonable response.”170The threat to the perpetrator of other disciplinaryaction or dismissal should also act asa clear deterrent. It is essential that the prohibitionof all corporal punishment and othercruel or degrading punishment, and the sanctionsthat may be imposed if it is inflicted,139Violence against children in schools and educational settings