We Can Do It: Solutions to Prevent Violence against Children

"...the utilisation of systemic, holistic and multifaceted approaches is critical to address the variety of drivers behind different forms of violence, abuse and exploitation."

World Vision is one of the agencies and organisations working in child protection who are collaborating to share understanding and knowledge of what works in reducing or ending risks of violence against children. This work is timely in light of the post-2015 development agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), whose focus includes (in Target 16.2) ending abuse, exploitation, trafficking, and all forms of violence and torture against children that harm their health, keep them from school or social participation, and restrict them from realising their potential as adults. This paper is World Vision's contribution to the discussion on evidence-based policies and programmes that can address violence in different forms across different contexts (especially at the community level in developing and fragile contexts).

World Vision works with and among local communities along the lines of the following closely interrelated thematic approaches (with project case studies from World Vision's programming presented throughout this report to illustrate the effectiveness of each):

1. Supporting families and caregivers through parenting skills training, sensitisation of parents for child protection concerns, home visiting programmes, and family livelihood support programmes - example: Implemented in Cambodia between 2010 and 2015, SAFE SEAs aimed to strengthen the capacity of government and civil society, including children directly, to prevent and respond to sexual exploitation and abuse of children (SEA). World Vision trained volunteers to deliver courses to parents on parenting skills and positive discipline and to provide ongoing family support as needed. This grounding in local ownership was found to be important in successes such as the rise in positive parental attitudes to protection of children from 35% to 60% of evaluated project participants within 1 year, leading to their stronger commitment neither to use physical punishment nor to allow their children to take part in harmful labour. Children commented that their parents were refraining from violence, were using gentler language with them, offering emotional support, motivating rather than punishing and giving good advice.
2. Empowering children as citizens with information, knowledge, and skills to protect themselves, manage risks, and positively influence their environment - example: "Evidence from several countries implementing the Keeping Children Safe Online (KCSO) project indicates that children who participated have increased not only their knowledge but also their skills and good judgment in protecting themselves and their peers from online contacts that could result in violence and risky content. In Lebanon, for instance, the project training increased the knowledge and protective skills among the participating children, youth, parents and caretakers by 20 per cent, while WV [World Vision] Armenia reported enhanced knowledge and application of Internet safety rules among parents (69 per cent), teachers (85 per cent) and children (92 per cent) who had participated in the project training."
3. Changing attitudes and social norms that tolerate or condone violence against children - example: Demonstrating the potential of community-level attitude change, a project in Zambia mobilised communities and their leaders in the remote rural area of Keembe to reject the long-held traditional practice of sexual cleansing. Children are often used for the ritual because of their perceived innocence, which involves risks such as sexual abuse, physical and emotional violence, and HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases. As a result of community mobilisation on child protection, traditional leaders agreed to support the elimination of this practice throughout Keembe. A local by-law was enacted in December 2009 banning the use of children in any form of ritual cleansing. In April 2010, a rural farmer involved with the project discovered that a 10-year-old boy had been selected for a sexual cleansing ritual with an elderly widow. He said, "When I heard about it, I quickly mobilised some of our committee members and we used the by-law on sexual cleansing to safeguard the boy's health." World Vision says "The strength of the [Vulnerable Child Advocacy (VCA)] model, particularly in Africa, is the involvement of traditional and informal leaders and the active engagement of communities to foster a local commitment for change."
4. Ensuring a continuum of services for prevention, protection, and empowerment in an effort to help vulnerable children mitigate risks and cope with experiences of violence - example: World Vision enables continuity in practice by strengthening the circles of care around children that include caregivers within the family, peers, and key professionals such as social workers, lawmakers, police, teachers, and health care staff. "Each person has his or her own protective capacity. When all are well informed and linked, they provide even stronger safety nets for children as they work together towards the common objective of keeping children safe. In Senegal, the Vélingara Child Protection project set up community child protection groups, including local government, teachers, traditional leaders and faith leaders, to monitor and respond to protection needs of the most vulnerable children. These groups developed and integrated over time, institutionalising inter-disciplinary cooperation as well as informal and formal networks of service and support at local and district level. The end result was a structure based on existing local mechanisms that could meet needs for early identification and prevention of violence, mediate among different interests and positions of children and caregivers, mobilise diverse resources and efforts to prevent violence against children, and facilitate the referral of cases to the state authorities to take legal action when required."
5. Prohibiting all forms of violence against children by law and implementing the laws in practice - example: "In the context of the ABK3-LEAP project for reducing child labour in the Philippines, local ordinances and children's codes contextualised national laws to draw a line between acceptable working conditions for children and unacceptable child labour or hazardous labour. A result of successful advocacy from local community groups in partnership with supportive local government, these local laws...offered an opportunity for the local authorities, communities and civil society to work together to formalise protection interventions; to create a basis for monitoring, oversight and accountability; and to integrate individual activities into more consolidated, comprehensive and locally owned systems for child protection. The ABK3 project had reduced the rates of child labour in the sugarcane sector by 64 per cent among targeted households when measured at the project's mid-term. The project evaluation attributed this achievement in large part to the successful local-level law reform and effective implementation measures."
6. Investing in violence-free schools through initiatives to end corporal punishment in schools, address bullying and other forms of violence, train teachers on positive, nonviolent discipline, and engage parents and communities to address violence against children - example: "From October 2011 to March 2014, World Vision's Social Accountability and Child Protection Programme (SA&CP) in South Sudan offered interconnected strategies for reducing community-based violence against children in a context where few institutional protective mechanisms currently existed....[T]he SA&CP project used community mobilisation, empowered by knowledge of government education policies, to advocate for an increase in the quality and equitable access of education through schools. Parent Teacher Associations drew up codes of conduct to facilitate agreement between schools and community members on roles and actions needed for positive change....Of the children who participated in the end-of-project evaluation, 95 per cent stated that they now felt safe at school. The enrolment rates in primary schools nearly doubled in two years, from 2,696 in 2011 to 5,085 in 2013, and primary school completion rates rose from 52 per cent to 98 per cent over the same period. The evaluation also noted improved student performance and a reduction in school pregnancies and related dropouts of girls, from 28 in 2012 to 4 in 2013."
7. Developing locally owned solutions, built on community assets and supported through partnerships among the families, children, communities, traditional leaders, and government institutions - example: "World Vision's Vélingara Child Protection (VCP) project in Senegal took place in 21 communities between 2010 and 2012. VCP was a low-cost, logical approach to create better protection structures across all spaces where children were at risk - in the home, in the streets and in schools - by linking networks of care already in place in the family and community. Relevant community decision makers and leaders incorporated specific protection elements into their ongoing community roles, including identification of risk, mediation of community conflict and referral of cases to appropriate authorities. This work was complemented by school-based committees training teachers and children to recognise, report and prevent child abuse, and by advocacy and awareness on birth registration. Children contributed by forming theatre groups and performing regularly to raise awareness of protection issues such as forced marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM) and child labour."

Table 1 on page 6 maps the child protection solutions of the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations (UN) Secretary-General on Violence against Children (SRSG), and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Table 2 on page 8 show how 7 World Vision project models apply solutions to reduce and prevent violence against children.

In conclusion, the paper notes that bridging the gap from evidence-based interventions to policy action is the next step in ensuring the programmatic approaches work effectively in practice. The suggestion is to use evidence to shift from reactive approaches - measuring violence reduction - to forward-looking approaches: alternative indicators that consider the capability of public administrations and their partners to implement laws and policies, and the quality and scope of this implementation. The latter embraces 2 dimensions of change: (i) the attitudes, mindsets, and commitment of public officials and their capability to translate political goals into practice and make national child protection systems operational and effective; and (ii) the structural set up of the public administration and the mechanisms in place for policy implementation. "At the international level, inter-agency collaboration is instrumental to review and analyse existing evidence, knowledge and experience in a consensus-building process leaning towards strategic questions of how to address violence against children."