Ending legalised violence against children: Prohibiting and eliminating corporal punishment in all alternative care and day care settings

Corporal punishment is inflicted on children in nearly all societies and cultures. Its legal and social acceptance is a potent symbol of children’s perceived low status. Although it is just as violent to hit a child as it is to hit an adult, by 2011, only 32 states worldwide had recognised this in legislation. In the remaining 166 states, children can be legally subjected to violent, humiliating and degrading punishment by those whose role it is to take care of them. But all children have a right to legal protection from all violent punishment, however “light”, wherever they are and whoever the perpetrator. This report provides guidance on achieving law reform which gives children in alternative care and day care the protection from all forms of corporal and other cruel and degrading punishment that is their absolute right.