Violence against children is at endemic levels across Pacific island nations and Timor-Leste, with children subject to brutal physical discipline in the home, as well as sexual violence, a new report has found.
More than 4 million children across the region had experienced violent discipline in the home and in Papua New Guinea 27 percent of parents or caregivers used physical punishment “over and over as hard as they could”, the report by leading NGOs working in the region found.
“The levels of physical, sexual and emotional violence in the region are shockingly high and it is something that we all need to come together to work around because that level of scale of violence is going to have long-term detrimental impacts for children,” said Kavitha Suthanthiraraj from Save the Children Australia, the author of the Unseen, Unsafe report, which was published on Tuesday.
Suthanthiraraj added, “It’s not talking about the normal kind of disciplining tactics that people might use, it’s more heavy-handed physical and/or humiliating punishment.”
The report also revealed that 24 percent of adolescent girls in the countries surveyed had experienced physical violence and 10.5 percent had experienced sexual violence. In Papua New Guinea, rates of sexual violence against children are “exceptionally high”, the report said, with Médecins Sans Frontières reporting that children were the victims in more than 50 percent of sexual violence cases referred to their clinics in the regions of Port Moresby and Tari.
In 2017, Australia spent just $1.1m on programs specifically targeted at ending violence against children in the Pacific and Timor-Leste, just 0.1 percent of its spending on overseas development assistance for the countries.
Tackling the problem required a “holistic approach”, Suthanthiraraj said, including education programs to teach children what behaviour is inappropriate and where to turn if they feel unsafe, and positive parenting programs to teach other methods of discipline, which she said “get really good responses in the community”.
Plan International Australia CEO Susanne Legena described the overwhelming figures in the Unseen and Unsafe report as ‘heart-wrenching’.
“Anyone confronted by these figures would agree that this is just horrific. All children deserve to feel safe, to be healthy and loved, no matter where they live. For too long, confronting this silent epidemic of violence against children has been ignored in foreign policy. We cannot let these children down,” Legena said. “It’s time to put children at the heart of all of Australia’s development programs, with policies and resources that prioritise child protection and child rights.”
