Around 120 million girls worldwide - more than one in 10 - have been
raped or sexually assaulted by the age of 20, according to a United Nations
report.
Drawing on data from 190 countries, the report from the UN children’s
agency, Unicef, notes that children around the world are routinely exposed to
physical, sexual and emotional violence ranging from murder and forced sexual
acts to bullying and abusive discipline.
It also found a fifth of murder victims globally are under 20, resulting
in 95,000 deaths in 2012.
Unicef found that murder is the leading cause of death among males
between the ages of 10 and 19 in several countries in Central and South
America, including Brazil, Panama, Venezuela, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
Nigeria, where the Boko
Haram terrorist group abducted more than 200 schoolgirls in April and
threatened to marry them off, had the largest number of young murder victims,
with almost 13,000 deaths in 2012,
followed by Brazil with about 11,000, the study found, UNICEF said.
The violence worldwide “cuts across boundaries of age, geography,
religion, ethnicity and income brackets,” Unicef executive director, Anthony
Lake, said.
“It occurs in places where children should be safe, their homes, schools
and communities. Increasingly, it happens over the internet, and it’s perpetrated
by family members and teachers, neighbours and strangers and other children.”
Among countries in Western Europe and North America, the United States
has the highest child homicide rate, it said.
Sexual violence is widespread - according to the report - about one in
10 girls around the world under 20, an estimated 120 million, have been forced
into sex acts.
Meanwhile, one in three married adolescent girls, about 84 million, have
been victims of emotional, physical or sexual violence committed by their
husbands or partners.
Unicef said the prevalence of partner violence is 70 per cent or higher
in Congo and Equatorial Guinea and approaches or exceeds 50 per cent in Uganda,
Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
In Switzerland, it said a 2009 study found 22 per cent of girls and 8
per cent of boys aged 15 to 17 had experienced at least one incident of sexual
violence, most commonly stemming from interactions on the internet.
The report showed the impact of violence on children has grown over the
last decade and cited a number of reasons why the phenomenon remains largely
ignored.
Violence against children in some countries is socially accepted,
tacitly condoned or not seen as being abusive, Unicef said.
Victims are too young or too vulnerable to report the crimes, the legal
system cannot adequately respond, and child protection services are also
scarce.
Susan Bissell, chief of the child protection unit at Unicef, said the
‘horrific atrocities that children experience on a daily basis everywhere in
the world’ demonstrate the urgent need for all countries to put a spotlight on
the problem.
Much of the violence against children is perpetrated by the people
tasked with taking care of them.
On average, about six in 10 children worldwide, or almost one billion,
between the ages of two and 14, are regularly subjected to physical punishment.
“We’re not talking about a little smack on the bottom,” Ms Bissell said.
“We’re talking about a blunt instrument, and repeated.”
Only 39 countries worldwide protect children legally from corporal
punishment, the report found. Often, the violence goes unreported.
One of the reasons for this is that violence seems normal. Nearly half
of all girls worldwide, between 15 and 19 think a husband is sometimes
justified in hitting or beating his wife, the report found.
According to UNICEF, slightly more than a third of students between the
ages of 13 and 15 worldwide are regularly bullied in school - and in Samoa, the
proportion rises to three-quarters.
In Europe and North America, almost a third of students aged 11 to 15
report bullying others - and in Latvia and Romania the number rose to nearly 60
per cent.
A separate Unicef report lays out six strategies to prevent and respond
to violence against children. The steps include providing support for families
and caregivers in hopes of reducing the risk of violence within the home.