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Child abuse tolerated in the Caribbean, says ECLAC report
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| Published on Tuesday, August 11, 2009 | Email To Friend Print Version
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SANTIAGO, Chile -- Children and teenagers under 18 in Latin America and the Caribbean suffer daily physical or psychological maltreatment, and a high percentage of adults believe that this is a normal means of education and socialization.
Surveys in 16 countries in the region conclude that a high percentage of adults –in some cases, over 80%- consider natural to resort to maltreatment, including physical punishment, to impose discipline on children.
This data is included in the article Child Abuse: A Painful Reality Behind Closed Doors, published in the ECLAC and UNICEF bulletin Challenges Nº 9, which examines the progress made in attaining the Millennium Development Goals with regard to children and adolescents.
The lack of standardized methodology to measure the different forms of abuse makes it impossible to arrive at comparable statistics among different countries. However, national surveys indicate that child abuse is on the rise, and is rarely reported.
In Colombia, 42% of women reported that their partners or husbands punished their children with beatings, according to the National Demography and Health Survey 2005.
In Uruguay, 82% of the adults consulted in a study of the Ministry of Social Development last year reported some sort of psychological or physical violence against a child in their household.
In Costa Rica, research of the Institute of Social Studies in Population published in 2004 found that 65.3% of adults exert physical violence against their children.
The main risk factor that facilitates domestic violence against children is the fact that the mother or father also suffered a similar experience during childhood, say the authors of the study, psychologist Soledad Larraín and sociologist Carolina Bascuñán, both of UNICEF. This is called the phenomenon of intergenerational transmission of violence.
The authors explain that violence is understood as the intentional use of force or physical power, real or threatened, causing, or having high probabilities of causing injury, death, psychological damage, development disorders or deprivation.
In spite of efforts made, the region has yet to develop an effective response against child abuse, and one of the main difficulties in doing so is the lack of information on its real dimension and nature, especially when it occurs within the home, because it is not usually reported, and when it is, only a fraction of the cases are actually punished by law.
The article in Challenges mentions the results of studies in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay and the Caribbean and Central American subregions.
As a way to advance in combating child abuse, experts recommend giving priority to prevention and early intervention with the participation of all institutions dealing with minors.
Counting with precise and reliable data on the magnitude, characteristics, risk factors and protection, and the impact on the family will contribute to designing adequate public policies. | | | | Reads : 1304 | | | |
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