UNICEF’s work for children in New Zealand is underpinned by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Almost every country in the world has signed up to this Convention which promotes children’s human rights. New Zealand has ratified the UN Convention. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child – the group that monitors country’s compliance with the Convention has recently released a General Comment on corporal punishment of children. A copy of this report is available electronically from beth@unicef.org.nz
The release of this paper is relevant to New Zealand at present as the Justice and Electoral Select Committee considers the Crimes (Abolition of Force as a Justification For Child Discipline) Amendment Bill.
Some of the key points that the “Comment’ makes are:
• Eliminating violent and humiliating punishment of children, through law reform and other necessary measures, is an immediate and unqualified obligation of States parties.
• Some States government’s have suggested that some level of “reasonable” or “moderate” corporal punishment can be justified as in the “best interests” of the child. The Committee asserts that the “best interests: principle cannot be used to justify practices, including corporal punishment, which conflict with the child’s human dignity and right to physical integrity.
• Implementation of the prohibition of all corporal punishment requires awareness-raising, guidance and training for all those affected.
• The purpose of law reform to prohibit corporal punishment is prevention by changing attitudes and practice.
• Given the widespread traditional acceptance of corporal punishment, prohibition on its own will not achieve the necessary changes in attitudes and behaviours.
• States must ensure that positive, non-violent relationships are consistently promoted to parents, carers, teachers and all who work with children.
• Children’s dependent status and the unique intimacy of family relations demand that decisions to prosecute parents, or to formally intervene in the family in other ways, should be taken with great care. Prosecuting parents in most cases is unlikely to be in children’s best interests.
• The UN Committee’s view is that prosecutions and other formal interventions should only proceed when they are regarded as both necessary to protect the child from significant harm and in the best interests of the child.
UNICEF New Zealand believes that it is entirely possible to meet the UN Committee’s standard by repealing section 59 and at the same time find measures to protect children’s best interests by avoiding prosecutions when assaults are trivial that do not endorse the use of corporal punishment.
