Dr Vishiesh Verma
November 19 is earmarked as the World Day for prevention of Child Abuse. In 2000, the Women’s World Summit Foundation launched the World Day for the prevention of Child Abuse to be commemorated on November 19 every year. This is a day marked to create awareness and build a culture of preventing child abuse, be it emotional, physical or sexual and violence against children. It is organised in synergy with the anniversary date of the convention on the Rights of Child (November 20).
The vulnerability of children from infancy through their childhood years of dependency on adults for safety and ongoing nurturing puts them at risk of mal-treatment in many forms. Child abuse is an aspect of humanity that is most universal in its incidence. It is neither restricted to any racial, cultural or socio-economic groups or it is limited to a child – parents or guardian situation but includes anyone who is entrusted with the care and control of a child that is core givers, relatives teachers, employers etc.
A World Health Organization report in 1999 defines child abuse as ‘all forms of physical and/or emotional treatment, sexual abuse, negligent treatment or commercial or other exploitation, resulting in actual or potential harm to the child’s right to health, survival, development or dignity in context of a relationship of responsibility, trust or power’. (WHO 1999) Recognizing these most fundamental violations of children’s human right, Article 19 and Article 34of the United Nation’s convention on the Rights of the child (which India has ratified) deal specifically with child abuse.
In Indian society child abuse in all its forms is far more prevalent than it has been willing to acknowledge. This is largely because the focus of the society has been more on basic survival needs of health, nutrition and shelter consequently little attention has been paid to the abuse of children and its impact. The traditional factors such as the sanctity of the family prerogatives of adult care givers and children viewed as parental property have denied intervention and inspection by society with abuse remaining under-reported because of the silence and denial around it and the discomfort that it generates if acknowledged. Yet conversely, over the last some decades with the increasing public awareness about child abuse and programmes being created for maltreated children, there has been a steady increase in the number of reported cases. And, paradoxically, society’s awareness and understanding of the pervasive- ness of child abuse and its adverse effects is slowly and finally growing. Early detection of child abuse is crucial in breaking the cycle of violence and preventing further physical and emotional damage to the child.
A recent poll which was a part of a Reuters Alert Net campaign to focus on neglected humanitarian crises, names India as the sixth most dangerous place on earth for children. It suggests they are more at risk here than in conflict ridden war-torn regions. The list of indicators of deprivation given covers hunger, malnutrition, lack of access to education and health care, child labour, gender discrimination, child sexual abuse, and factors like exposure to violence-as being threat to safe childhood. India has about 422 million children, majority of them live in a nightmare, a dystopia, founded on our collective complicity and silence. By Government of India’s account, more than two thirds of Indian children experience beatings in their homes, school and workplace.
In 2012 Central and State Governments have been issued notices by Supreme Court on the petition alleging that about 55,000 children have gone missing in the past three years. Inspite of the ban on child labour the official sources gave the figure of child labour as 1.7 crore of which 20 lakh children worked in dangerous conditions. In 2012 Rohtak based shelter home for girls ‘Apna Ghar’ being run by NGO and Bharat Vikas Sangh for several years came into news after a team of National Commission for protection of Child’s Rights rescued 102 inmates lodged there.
Out of the 105 Child Caring Institutions (CCI) with 4243 inmates in Haryana and Punjab many had been found defaulters of sexual abuse of children. Inquiries are going on and many officials have been found involved. What could be the punishment for them in the light of punishment to S.P.S Rathore, former Haryana Director General of Police (received six month imprisonment for sexually abusing a teenager 19 years ago)
In 2007, the Union Ministry of women and child development released the study on child Abuse in India More than 12,000 children were polled to arrive at an empirical picture of the scale of beatings and sexual crimes that Indian children endure. Fifty three percent of the children said they had encountered one or more forms of sexual abuse. 68.99% said they had suffered physical abuse, including beatings. More than a fifth reported severe sexual abuse including assault. Well over half of those reporting severe sexual abuse were boys the study found.
We generally believe that sexual abuse takes place when children are in the environment outside the confines of their homes and schools. That the study found was simply not true. 53% of children not going to school said they had been sexually abused in their family environment. Just under half said that they had encountered sexual abuse at their schools. It has been found that most vulnerable were the children at work places.
According to a recent report submitted by the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), 48, 338 Children have been raped in the decade between 2001 and 2011. In these ten years, there has been a 336 percent increase in the number of child rapes. Yet, this is only a very partial picture because, as the report emphasises, the majority of child rapes are never reported. The 56 pages of the ACHR report titled “India ‘s hell holes”, details scores of these children, girls and boys, are raped, sodomized , tortured and forced to work and condemned to live in “Inhuman Conditions”. The report is disturbing because it focuses on those Institutions where children are supposed to be “protected”- observation homes, shelter homes, children’s home and special homes designed to take care of children who have been abandoned, have runaway or been trafficked.
Sorry State of affairs in our Country is, there is no Institutional machinery to investigate schools shelter, homes and children’s work places for sexual and physical abuse, barring a handful of organizations and individuals working to address the needs of abused children. There is no resource which victims and their families can turn to, for help. Elsewhere in the World, the existence of well functioning justice mechanisms and an open public debate on child sexual abuse- seems to have helped contain the problem to at least some extent.
(The writer is a former reader Coordinator of University of Jammu.)
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