The Key Messages
As part of the Together to #ENDviolence campaign, we published six game-changing actions to end violence against children.
Over many months, experts from across the End Violence community developed a prioritized set of policy proposals to end violence against children, informed by evidence and research from around the world.
If adopted and implemented, these game-changing proposals will strengthen the policy and legislative environment, bolster institutional frameworks and systems, and provide the long-term funding and other resources needed to translate what we know works into action to prevent violence against children at home, at school, online and within their community.
Below, you can explore all six policy proposals in three languages — English, French and Spanish.
The first policy proposal calls for every country to legally ban all forms of violence against children by 2030. To do so, Together to #ENDviolence is urging all countries to commit to and start the legislative process to prohibit corporal punishment, child marriage and sexual violence in all settings by 2022.
Ban all forms of violence: corporal punishment
Ban all forms of violence: early marriage (Spanish & French to come)
The second policy proposal calls for equipping parents and caregivers to keep children safe at home, online and within the community. To do so:
- All governments should scale-up the use of the evidence-based positive parenting resources, including resources to protect children from online violence, developed before and during the COVID-19 crisis.
- All governments should scale up parenting support programmes including home visitation.
- All governments should put in place policy frameworks and plans to scale up parenting support programmes.
The third policy proposal calls for making the internet safe for children. To do so, governments and private sector companies should:
- Adopt and implement comprehensive child online safety policies, based on children’s rights to access the digital world in ways that are safe and secure in line with the UNCRC General Comment (No25), on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment.
- Increase investments to scale up solutions that keep children safe, particularly those that tackle grooming and distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and sexual abuse.
- Commit to preventing, detecting and stopping all activities that may harm children online, including grooming and distribution of CSAM building on frameworks such as the WeProtect Global Alliance Model National Response, and the six actions outlined by the Broadband Commission report on Online Child Safety.
The fourth policy proposal calls for making schools safe, non-violent and inclusive. To do so:
- All governments should ensure that violence prevention and response measures, including removing violence-related barriers to return to school post COVID-19, are part of school reopening plans, particularly for girls and those children most at risk of not returning.
- All governments should commit to and allocate investments for policy and programmes to end violence in and through schools.
- All donors should commit a percentage of education spending to remove violence-related barriers to enable a safe return to school.
The fifth proposal calls for protecting children from violence in humanitarian settings. To do so, governments and humanitarian actors should prioritize the inclusion of child protection elements in all humanitarian and refugee response plans.
The sixth policy proposal calls for more investment, better spent. To do so:
- All governments should commit to costing and adequately funding the implementation of their national action plans to end violence against children by December 2021.
- All donors should ensure and increase funding to address violence against children in all settings.
- Donors should agree on standardised methodology for tracking donor investments in ending violence against children that can be integrated in the OECD-DAC CRS database.
- The private sector should make new financial commitments to address violence against children and to prevent and respond to online harm to children.
