By Maria Emad
Egypt, SUSI Cohort 2018
In an era where internet plays a vital role in shaping people’s wildest imaginings as well as replacing genuine knowledge with “the wisdom of the crowd” dangerously blurring the lines between fact and opinion.
In an era where there are always multiple ways for everyone to express themselves, many are heard yet still feels not heard, and especially children, the most vulnerable citizens in our societies.
Children don’t have enough understanding and cannot be aware enough to sort out or advocate against abuse, violation of rights, and distorted social norms. For, as Chief Dan George states, “a child does not question the wrongs of grown-ups, he suffers them” .
Likewise, Susan Forward notes, “a child that’s being abused by its parents doesn’t stop loving its parents, it stops loving itself”. Susan’s words draw attention to the concept of “loving” and contemplating the way humans perceive and convey such repetitive word in daily life.
And what I mean by love here is not the love of the romantic world and theatre. A love mixed by beauty and charm and sensuality taken down in shorthand is just robbed of its higher purpose which is cherishing and nourishing. Love is supposed to be primarily fulfilled in childhood, with all forms of emotional security, unconditional love, and empathy with the child’s feelings. Children also require respect for their developmental level, sensitivity to the child’s needs, and verbal and physical affection. All of us develop our core identity, our expectations about how people will treat us and about our perception of loving based on our relationships with our parents.
“Children of toxic parents grow up feeling tremendous confusion about what love means and how it’s supposed to feel. Their parents/ caregivers did extremely unloving things to them in the name of love. They came to understand love as something chaotic, dramatic, confusing, and often painful—something they had to give up their own dreams and desires for.” Susan Forward with Craig Buck., 1989. Toxic Parents. New York: Bantam Books.
That requires from us, as Child Protection Activists, to try to put ourselves in the place of a child, and to see what it means for a child to feel loved and protected. Activists also work to ensure children are in an environment that creates a sense of being valued, and cherished, and enjoying safety, knowing that, if something goes wrong and if there is a risk or a fear, someone is ready to intervene early enough for the fear not to grow.
The negative disparity of childhood experiences and the impact of our cultures that pass down from one generation to another, result in adults who suffer from mental illness and a lack of connection to their values [21]. These scars are passed down from generation to generation forming engrafted patterns that we never wish for, as the link between experiencing violence, neglect, exploitation or abuse in childhood and the lifelong impact of these results in adults are plentiful.
The early moments of life offer an unparalleled opportunity to build the brains of the children who will build the future. But far too often, the opportunity is squandered when patterns of violence and emotional abuse are interchanged with reconciliation and nurturing. This zigzag can be especially damaging for children who only experience cycles of abuse-reconciliation-nurturing followed up by abuse again as they grow up. Unfortunately, as these children mature then they often repeat these patterns in their own intimate relationships and families.
The science is clear: a child’s brain is built, not born. While genes provide the blueprint for the brain, a child’s environment shapes brain development.
Millions of the world's most disadvantaged children are deprived of the opportunity to be fully developed, Children living outside a family environment are especially marginalized: Children living in detention facilities, orphanages, on the street or in refugee camps require additional protection, resources, and support to ensure their rights are not being denied.
Children that are in greater risk to get exposed to sexual exploitation, child trafficking child labor, children without parental care, children associated with armed forces and groups, and children who grew in communities that do harmful traditional practices such as social norms like female genital mutilation and child marriages.
Prevailing norms can determine whether violence – among children and adults – becomes the accepted or even expected response in cases of small disputes, perceived slights or insults. So, it’s not surprising that in compulsive cultures and marginalized communities where the culture of dialogue and communicating issues do not exist that they reconcile with such norms. People also have little information about child development, so they follow their instincts or their own childhood experience. But, many times, such instincts are emotional reactions that aren’t well through-out. And sometimes their childhood experiences were negative, or even violent ones. Sometimes parents think that violence is the only mean to discipline children. They fear to lose control, so they resort to short-term approaches which cause long-term distortions. Violence can make a child stop doing a certain act out of fear and fright of adults’ anger/reaction and not out of actual behavioral change. True changes in behavior needs communication and dialogue. It needs efforts, patience, the willingness to understand one another as a human being, and acknowledging their needs.
Violence, according to the CRCE, includes all forms of physical or mental violence, injury and abuse, neglect, or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse. So, a very comprehensive and extensive range of different forms of harm, from physical and mental violence, to maltreatment or exploitation, to negligence (also including the detention of children because of their or their parents’ migration status)
Emotional or psychological violence and witnessing violence includes restricting a child’s movements, denigration, ridicule, threats and intimidation, discrimination, rejection and other non-physical forms of hostile treatment. Witnessing violence can involve forcing a child to observe an act of violence, or the incidental witnessing of violence between two or more other persons. Source: INSPIRE: seven strategies for ending violence against children (WHO, 2016)
An estimated one billion children, half of all the world’s children, experience violence every year. [1, 2]
Adding to the aforementioned statistics, violence affects children across class, ethnic, educational, and religious groups. This is not just a problem of the very poor. It's not just a problem of particular religious groups. It affects all children, rich children, privileged children, children from educated families.
“According to statistics gathered in 2002, over 150 million girls and 73 million boys had forced sexual intercourse or sexual violence imposed on them. And this data doesn't even cover trafficking of children or labor exploitation, nor does it cover a probably much greater hidden body of violence, violence that's hidden because children are fearful about reporting it, or violence that's hidden because it's socially accepted, maybe by the children themselves, or violence that is hidden because there are no trusted outlets for children to reveal the secret. There's no trusted person. There's no one they're encouraged to go and speak to report the violence.
Moreover, between 22 per cent and 84 per cent of children 2–14 years old experienced physical punishment in the home in 37 countries surveyed between 2005 and 2007.”
In light of this finding, we can talk about Child Protection and its ways of implementation. Child protection is really about having those systems that safeguard our children from exploitation, from violence, from abuse, fear, and even neglect, making sure children grow in a very healthy environment that nurtures their holistic growth. Child protection should foster a healthy, enabling, and supportive environment to ensure a child's well-being and ability to live free of violence and realize their full potential at home, school, or the community in general.
Realizing children’s rights to a violence-free childhood Actions to end violence in childhood should be seen as part of a “rights revolution” which has extended the rule of law to cover violence within the most private of places – the home. The CRC encapsulates such aspirations, and recognizes that children are the foundation for sustainable societies. Children are not objects, but persons with rights of their own that must be articulated and enforced. Children can pursue many aspects of these rights themselves. Indeed, they often have a strong sense of fairness and justice. Nevertheless, children often have no voice to express the traumatic effects of violence, and have little capacity to influence public decision-making. Children rely on responsible adults and on society to intervene on their behalf for their safety and well-being.
Prevention is possible. “The launch of the Global Partnership to End Violence against Children in 2016, serves as a global platform whose aim is “ending violence against children in every country, every community and every family” (End Violence Against Children, 2018)”.
Essential public action should be taken, not just by governments but also by civil society, international organizations, academia, researchers and the media.
All people should unite to end violence in childhood – to break the culture of silence, strengthen violence prevention systems, and improve knowledge and evidence.
We all must get in the ring and break the silence. The first task is to break the silence around childhood violence. Violence needs to be spoken about and made fully visible. Traditional and social media can highlight the scale of the problem and help change attitudes and behaviour. They can challenge gender and social norms that belittle the dignity and freedoms of women and children, while also highlighting the extent of violence against boys, and against children who are vulnerable because of sexual orientation, disability or ethnicity.
Leaders, governments and communities across the world are in a position to transform children’s lives and the futures of their societies, establishing the basis for a just, peaceful and equitable world – a world worthy of its children.
Approaches to prevention cluster into three areas:
1- Those that enhance individual capacities
2- Those that embed violence-prevention strategies into existing services and institutions
3- Those that eliminate the root causes of violence
Enhance individual capacities: Well-informed parents and caregivers can both prevent violence and create a nurturing environment free from fear in which children can realize their full potential. Children themselves can also be equipped with skills that build resilience and capabilities.
Embed violence-prevention in institutions and services: Violence is interwoven into the everyday lives of children and women. Prevention should correspondingly be built into all institutions and services that address children’s everyday needs.
Eliminate the root causes of violence: Societies and governments should work with families and communities to address many of the root causes of violence – to establish violence-free communities and change adverse social norms.
Once archaic doctrines of original sin are discarded, we can see the clear evidence that the roots of serious criminality in children develop and flourish from adult – mostly parental - violence and neglect, compounded usually by a failure of the State to fulfil its obligations to support parents in their childrearing responsibilities and to provide children with absorbing and rights-respecting education. The more serious and extreme a child’s offending is, the more certain we can be of its origins in adult maltreatment – or sometimes simply the tragic loss of parents or other key carers.
The child lives in the family. The family is affected by the community. And of course, the community is surrounded by state institutions, civil society, and international organizations. We need a preparation system and ongoing training and support and supervision and a higher education system that has the capacity to train not only child protection workers, but those that are working in health and teacher preparation, so they can be responsive to child protection issues.
