Bangladeshi children abused

Regular physical abuse at school, at home or where they work is a fact of life for most Bangladeshi children, a new report highlights. About 91 per cent of children experience physical abuse at schools while 74 per cent at homes reportedly receive physical punishment as way of discipline, showing corporal punishment in the south Asian country is widespread. Results of an opinion poll out yesterday found that 88 per cent of children in Bangladeshi schools are punished with sticks or canes. Some 76 per cent of them were hit across the palm with rulers and 63 per cent hit on other body parts with rulers or sticks.

Ishrat Jahan Ima, 7 young at the Sher-E-Bangla Nagar Government Girls’ School in Dhaka, is one of them. “They -teachers - beat us with wooden and steel rulers and sticks,” she told the United Nations news service, IRIN, recalling how one teacher proudly showed off a broken switch bragging that he had broken it by beating a fifth-year student. Even though it is illegal for children to work in Bangladesh, the report showed that about 10 per cent of the children had jobs. And as well as having to put up with a heavy workload, poor wages and dangerous working conditions - a quarter of them were regularly beaten; 65 percent said they were punished in one form or another in their workplaces.

Some 99.3 percent of the children reported being verbally abused and threatened regularly by their parents. Seventy per cent were disciplined by slapping, while 40 per cent were regularly beaten or kicked. The Children's opinion poll 2008 of nearly 4,000 families was run by the United Nations Children’s Fund, Unicef and the ministry of women and children affairs. Children should not be subjected physical punishment in the name of teaching discipline, State Minister for Women and Children Affairs Shirin Sharmin Choudhury said, launching the report. “Physical or mental punishment affects children's dignity and it also hampers their mental as well as physical development,” she said.

Mass awareness is needed to change teachers, parents and employers’ traditional mindsets, she stressed because many believe that physical or mental punishment is helpful for children. Ms Choudry said she hoped that suggestions in the study would be considered in the National Action Plan regarding the child rights issue. Bangladesh was one of the first countries to sign the UN International Bill of Rights for Children in the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The bill says that all forms of physical and mental abuse against children must be prohibited.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children