“No one must be left behind”
In Colombo this week: Marta Santos Pais. Pic courtesy UNICEF
The world has a new goal – to end violence against children by 2030. In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Times, Special Representative of the UN Secretary General, Marta Santos Pais said that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) “have included violence against children as a cross-cutting concern,” and added that the 2030 deadline provided a specific target. “So it’s not anymore a distant goal we will try to achieve over time, but no, we have a time frame, we cannot afford to postpone it. That is the call that rises from this agenda.”
When Santos Pais uses the word “afford” she is speaking not only of the emotional and psycho-social toll on individuals and entire communities, but quite literally of the price tag. Studies have shown that violence against children costs the global economy a staggering $7 trillion every year. Santos Pais explains that the costs wrack up – from the tangible such as medical bills and the expenses to the justice system and social services to the impact on a child’s education and emotional well-being. “It reaches 8 per cent of global GDP and so we are talking about a huge cost,” she says.
Santos Pais was in Colombo this week to attend a round table with representatives of eight South Asian countries to discuss and advance national and regional implementation of campaigns to prevent violence against children. The meeting was organised by the South Asia Initiative to End Violence against Children (SAIEVAC), an apex body of SAARC, with the support of ECPAT International and UNICEF, and was hosted by the Government of Sri Lanka. The 17 SDGs and 169 targets aim to build on the Millennium Development Goals and complete what the former did not achieve.
Much of the conversation happening now is rooted in a landmark UN study released a decade ago, which brought to light the crippling and widespread prevalence of violence against children. The authors of the report noted then that ‘violence against children cuts across boundaries of culture, class, education, income and ethnic origin, and occurs in many different settings.’ The report is considered so influential that it led to the creation of a new position at the UN – in fact, the role that Santos Pais herself has occupied since 2009.
The Special Representative is keenly aware of how children are among the most vulnerable in our society. There is a pressing need for data to determine the extent of the problem, but the collection of information itself presents the first challenge.
“We don’t know enough about how many children are affected and in which way. What is happening when an incident of violence takes place? Do the children tell the story, and if yes to whom? What is the follow-up ensured? Do professionals working with and for children consider it their business to investigate?” asks Santos Pais. A huge part of the problem is that children are most likely to experience violence in intimate settings at the hands of those they trust and love or who has some form of authority over them.
Santos Pais quotes studies that report that globally more than 80% of children experience violence in their own homes. Issues such as sexual exploitation, child labour and child marriage are prevalent across the globe, but corporal punishment, says Santos Pais, is actually the most common form of violence against children. The argument against it is that it does not teach children peaceful and non-violent ways of resolving conflict and instead perpetuates the cycle of violence.
“In the South Asian region live the majority of the world’s child population, so we are not talking about a minor issue. Whatever happens in this region will have a global impact,” she emphasises.The fight against violence is not a new one, but Santos Pais sees three main gaps that need to be plugged.
The first is that many countries react to incidents of violence rather than seek to prevent them. “There is no way that countries can be effective by simple intervening in a fragmented and reactive manner,” she says. There is a need for a national, robust and integrated agenda, she emphasises, that protects children along every step of the way but one that also works with perpetrators to prevent repetition. Currently authorities in most countries do not have the political clout and the funding to drive such an ambitious campaign.
The second is the need for powerful legislation, which has teeth and is implemented. “We have today 50 countries in the world that have a clear ban on violence, which includes corporal punishment within the family,” she says pointing out that Sri Lanka’s constitutional reform process offers a wonderful opportunity to guarantee the well-being of this country’s children.
The third point in her list is a familiar one, the pressing need for more data on violence against children, a need that has only grown with the spread and diversification of technology. Santos Pais uses the example of parents who share nude videos and pictures of their children with paedophiles under the impression that their children are protected from harm since they are not in direct contact with abusers.Collecting data on such poorly understood issues can not only inform efforts to protect children but also helps mobilise society at large.
Reiterating the need for systems that integrate all the judicial, legal and medical reports and information into national data, Santos Pais says, “the intention is not to bring blame either on families, on schools, or on government authorities, but to say, where are the problems and how can we make it a national priority?”
Sri Lanka has seen a rise in crimes against children, says Una McCauley, UNICEF’s representative in Sri Lanka, but she thinks it possible that the real difference is not that more violence is being enacted but that it is better reported. “Very often you see more cases when people either have more faith in the system, and more recently the active interest that the media has taken in high profile cases of violence against children is also playing a part,” she explains. In this context, the work of Special Representative Santos Pais’s office takes on special significance. “In Sri Lanka, it’s a good moment to say, ‘More needs to be done’ and secondly to ask ‘How can it be done?’”
There is clearly a greater need for organisations, both governmental and non-governmental, to coordinate their efforts. “It’s important to see what we can learn from each other,” says Santos Pais.“With this new development agenda we now need to do better, to do differently and to do effectively,” says the Special Representative. Underlying all these efforts there is to be one goal – “leave no one behind,” she concludes.