Prohibiting all corporal punishment in schools: Global report 2011

Corporal punishment of children – wherever it occurs and whoever the perpetrator – breaches their fundamental rights to protection from all forms of violence and to respect for their human dignity. Its legality breaches their right to equality under the law. When it happens in schools, corporal punishment also violates children’s right to education.
Laws which condone corporal punishment reflect the low status of children in society, not a commitment to their equal status as human beings symbolised by almost every states’ ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is time to put things right, and to give children the legal protection from assault that other people have long benefited from. Prohibiting corporal punishment is an obligation under international human rights law, not a voluntary gesture based on good-will. This report is a call to action. It describes what needs to be done to achieve prohibition and the progress made so far in prohibiting corporal punishment in schools, and points to useful resources to support the promotion of law reform.