Nearly 400 million children under the age of five — roughly 60 percent in that age group globally — experience violent physical or psychological discipline at home, from spanking to insults, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said late on Monday.
The new UNICEF estimates reflect data from 100 countries collected from 2010 to last year, and covers both “physical punishment” and “psychological aggression.”
For UNICEF, psychological abuse can include screaming at a child, or calling them “stupid” or “lazy,” while physical abuse includes shaking, hitting or spanking a child, or any action intended to cause physical pain or discomfort, without injury.
Photo: Reuters
Of those nearly 400 million children, about 330 million of them experience physical punishment, the UN agency said.
Even if more and more countries are banning corporal punishment of children, nearly 500 million children under the age of five are not legally protected against such practices.
More than one mother or responsible adult in four believes that physical punishments are necessary to properly educate their children, UNICEF said.
“When children are subjected to physical or verbal abuse at home, or when they are deprived of social and emotional care from their loved ones, it can undermine their sense of self-worth and development,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement. “Nurturing and playful parenting can bring joy and also help children feel safe, learn, build skills and navigate the world around them.”
For the first time, UNICEF published findings on the access children have to being able to play, to mark the first-ever International Day of Play yesterday.
Data from 85 countries showed that one out of every two children at age four cannot play with the person who takes care of them at home, and about one in eight children under the age of five does not have any toys at all.
About 40 percent of children aged two to four do not get enough stimulation or meaningful interaction at home, and one out of 10 does not have access to activities “critical to promoting cognitive, social and emotional development, like reading, storytelling, singing and drawing,” UNICEF said.
“On the first International Day of Play, we must unite and recommit to ending violence against children and promoting positive, nurturing, and playful caregiving,” Russell said.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
RSS