Website for Children
The Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children has launched a new website for children. This comprehensive site contains information about children campaigning to end corporal punishment in many countries. It also contains useful resources to help children and adults campaign together against corporal punishment. Visit this website at: http://www.endcorporalpunishment.org/children
The debate in New Zealand about the use of physical punishment of children and law change involved limited but valuable and important opportunities for children to participate. The new website reports on these.
http://www.endcorporalpunishment.org/children/countries/new-zealand.html
What sort of sense do children make of being smacked and hit? Are children aware that they have rights to safety and physical integrity? What do children think of laws that “excuse” assault of children (excused by some people as an adult’s right to chose how to discipline their child). Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child advises that State Parties shall assure to the child which is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting that child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child. Physical punishment is absolutely a matter that affects children.