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LEGAL REFORM – ONLINE RESOURCES
This area of the website is designed to accompany the Global Initiative handbook Prohibiting corporal punishment of children: A guide to legal reform and other measures (February 2009), available to download here as a PDF. The resources below have also been collected into a printabe PDF of Legal Reform Online Resources. We welcome further information about other legal and other resources to support prohibition: please email info@endcorporalpunishment.org.
Click on the following links to access relevant resources:
Legislative measures to prohibit corporal punishment
Other measures to support prohibition
Internet and other resources to support prohibition
Legislative measures to prohibit corporal punishment
Home, including removal of legal defences (“reasonable punishment”, etc)
Removal of legal defences available to parents/carers who use corporal punishment is an essential aspect of full prohibition of corporal punishment. This section includes examples of legislation and draft legislation which clearly state that legal defences for using "reasonable punishment", force "by way of correction", etc are no longer available to parents and guardians using corporal punishment in the name of discipline of children, and which explicitly prohibit corporal punishment in the home. Examples come from Canada (draft legislation, before Parliament 2007), Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Romania, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom (draft legislation, rejected by Parliament 2004), Uruguay and Venezuela.
In May 2008, Save the Children, in collaboration with the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children and the Churches’ Network for Non-Violence, held the first global workshop on achieving legal reform to prohibit corporal punishment and other degrading and humiliating punishment of children, involving nearly 60 child rights advocates from almost 30 countries. The final report – “Towards the universal prohibition of all violent punishment of children” – documents the information exchanged during the workshop and provides an important resource for all those working to achieve law reform. Download the full report or to the individual chapters listed below:
- Executive summary and introduction
- Reforming the law
- Getting laws into and through parliament
- Child participation in law reform
- Global progress in gaining faith-based support for law reform
- Implementation of prohibition in the home and other settings
- The use of legal action and international and regional human rights mechanisms
- International lobbying to promote prohibition and elimination of all corporal punishment
- Conclusion
Annexes
Schools
Examples in this section show that in some states a comprehensive explicit prohibition is felt to be sufficient to make corporal punishment by teachers unlawful, while in others there is also a need to clarify the fact that while teachers may have the same authority as parents over students in their charge, this authority does not extend to any right to use corporal punishment, again illustrating the importance of removing legal defences (see above section). Examples come from Ecuador, Haiti, Lithuania, Philippines, Romania, South Africa, Tonga and United Kingdom.
Juvenile justice systems
Prohibiting corporal punishment of children and young people in conflict with the law means prohibiting its use as a sentence for crime, including crimes under religious or customary law, for example Islamic law, and prohibiting its use as a disciplinary measure in penal institutions. In the latter case, it is again important that any legal provision relating to a “right” of those with parental authority to use corporal punishment as a disciplinary measure is repealed, since in penitentiary and correctional institutions holding young people below the age of 18, staff are usually in the position of acting in loco parentis. The following examples cover prohibition of both judicial (sentencing) and disciplinary (institutional) corporal punishment, and come from Hong Kong, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, United States and Venezuela.
In many states judicial corporal punishment of children (and sometimes of adults as well) has been prohibited but there has been a significant delay in repealing or amending legislation allowing for such punishment. In such cases, corporal punishment may still be imposed on young people found guilty of criminal offence by some courts, either because of a lack of knowledge of the new prohibiting law or because the prohibiting law is not yet being implemented effectively in certain areas of the country. There are also states where there are laws clearly stipulating that children and young people below the age of 18 may not be sentenced to corporal punishment (e.g. whipping or flogging) but where exceptions are made in the case of hudud crimes under Islamic law where such punishments may be applied when puberty is reached. For states which adhere in whole or in part to Sharia law in criminal cases, we have been unable to obtain satisfactory examples of legal texts which prohibit the imposition of hadd punishments for all persons below the age of eighteen, regardless of the achievement of puberty.
Alternative care systems
Because of the wide range of settings and of providers that comprise alternative care systems (covering care institutions provided by the state and by voluntary or private bodies, foster care, day care and so on), the most effective prohibition of corporal punishment of children in those settings is achieved by explicit prohibition of all corporal punishment, including in the family home. This ensures that children are protected wherever they are and whoever the perpetrator of violence and that there are no legal loopholes where a particular setting is not covered by law or legal justifications for using corporal punishment under a “right of correction” or similar. Since most carers of children in alternative care settings are acting in loco parentis, it is essential that any legal defences of a “right” to administer “reasonable punishment” are explicitly removed from law, whether they exist in statute, case law, custom or tradition.
The multitude of forms of alternative care in which children may find themselves, and the complexity of laws and regulations governing them, also highlight the need, as part of the process of legal reform, to undertake a systematic review of all legislation impacting on the settings concerned, to ensure that no stone is left unturned in the task of repealing/amending provisions which allow for corporal punishment to be administered.
The Global Initiative legal reform handbook discusses in detail the legal reform in relation to the removal of such defences and the establishment of equal legal protection from assault for adults and children which is necessary to prohibit all corporal punishment of children. In addition, given the wide range of settings which comprise alternative care systems, many of the examples given in the above sections are relevant to prohibition in alternative care contexts. Further examples are given here, from Australia, Costa Rica, Iceland, Jamaica, Romania, United Kingdom and Uruguay.
Other measures to support prohibition
As discussed in the legal reform handbook, and particularly with reference to General Comment No. 8 of the Committee on the Rights of the Child and article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, in addition to legislative measures, states are required to take administrative, social and educational measures to protect children from all forms of violence, including corporal punishment. These include public and professional awareness-raising on the negative effects of corporal punishment, promotion of positive, non-violent and participatory forms of discipline in childrearing and education.
This section includes examples of measures that have been introduced in various states to support the introduction of legislation prohibiting corporal punishment in the family home and in schools. Many of the examples given are relevant to the support of prohibition in other settings, and will be easily adapted for such use. For instance, the examples supporting prohibition in the home are readily applicable to supporting prohibition in home-based alternative care settings, and measures supporting prohibition in schools are clearly applicable to other institutional settings and professionals working with children.
There are also many resources available on the internet and/or in print that can be used to support implementation of prohibition, for example through the promotion of positive discipline (see “Internet and other resources to support prohibition” below).
Supporting prohibition in the home
Examples are given of awareness-raising and public education in Denmark, Finland and Sweden.
Supporting prohibition in schools
Examples are given of government and non-government initiative in South Africa and the United Kingdom.
Internet and other resources to support prohibition
For links to other resources to support legal reform, promoting positive discipline etc, go to our Resources section and see Useful publications available online.