One billion children experience some form of violence each year. Girls are particularly vulnerable, with 120 million under the age of 20 reporting forced sexual intercourse or other forced sexual acts at some point in their lives. Beyond the immediate impact of experiencing violence, longer-term consequences include: early pregnancy with the greater risk of maternal mortality, HIV/AIDs, loss of education, substance abuse and mental health issues.
Tackling the issues of ending child violence though is a severely underfunded area, and this toolkit is a call to invest. It puts forward solutions including: expanding economic opportunities for women and girls, providing training and education to families, mobilising communities to change norms and attitudes that condone violence, ensuring laws and policies are effectively implemented and enacted, and increasing support for children who have suffered violence, as well as bolstering data collection to get a more accurate picture in terms of progress.
The toolkit includes factsheets, infographics, links to further resources and a video providing facts and figures and presenting experiences from Kenya, Haiti, Laos, Swaziland and Malawi on actions they have taken to end child violence.