100 Days to the Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children: We must make each of them count
2nd August 2024By:
Daniela Ligiero Chief Executive Officer & President, Together for Girls
We are 100 days away from the first-ever Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children. The time is now to make a difference in the lives of children worldwide.
Every year one billion children are victims of emotional, physical or sexual violence. That’s one in two children on the planet.
Both online and offline, children are being targeted by violence in their homes, schools, neighborhoods, sports, places of worship… the very environments that are meant to protect them.
This November, the first-ever Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children will take place in Colombia. This landmark event has the potential to change the course of those one billion childhoods.
Make or break: centering survivors at the Global Ministerial
To mark the 100-day countdown to the Global Ministerial, Together for Girls and the Brave Movement hosted an event with WeProtect Global Alliance and Safe Online.
At the event, attended by public survivor leaders, government representatives and other key child protection stakeholders we launched our new film “Beyond the Screen: Hidden Voices of Online Abuse” and our petition “Stop online child sex abuse now!”.
We are calling on governments, tech companies and funders to take bold steps and commit to ending sexual exploitation and abuse of children online and ensure prevention, healing and justice.
The takeaway from the event was clear: this is an unprecedented opportunity to make a difference in the lives of children.
Survivors of violence against children have not always been given the opportunity to share their experiences and contribute to developing solutions to prevent and address this issue. But at the Global Ministerial, this will be different.
One of the foundational pillars of the Conference is focused on providing a platform for public survivors to share their experiences and, more importantly, their expertise. Lived experience is essential to informing the development and implementation of trauma-informed policies and programs.
To facilitate the meaningful participation of survivors, the Brave Movement is leading the coordination of the newly launched Global Survivor Council (GSC). Members of the GSC were selected via an open application process.
The GSC brings together individuals from survivor-led networks across the globe, who can speak to all forms of violence against children. It will play a crucial role in ensuring continuous survivor engagement in the design and delivery of the conference as well as the final political declaration.
Only if we center the perspectives of individuals with lived experience will we be able to ensure the response to violence against children is fit for purpose.
Governments must be at the negotiating table
We’ve seen how coordinated and multisectoral government action to protect children has led to groundbreaking reductions in the prevalence of violence in countries like Kenya and Eswatini.
Although there is still work to do, in both countries, the prevalence of all forms of violence - sexual, physical and emotional - saw big falls between their first and second Violence Against Children and Youth Surveys (VACS) for both girls and boys aged 13-24*.
Their first VACS surveys showed troubling levels of violence against children, and mobilized the governments of Kenya and Eswatini to implement legal reforms to prevent and address this issue. Although no levels of violence against children are acceptable, the improvements between their first and second surveys show the impact that governments can have when they make protecting children from violence a priority.
The Global Ministerial is therefore a key opportunity for other governments to lead by making new political and financial commitments to prevent and end violence against children. Change is possible, but a first step is the commitment to act.
100 days out: the power to protect children is in our hands
At the Global Ministerial we have the opportunity to ensure that an entirely new generation of children is set up for success—that our institutions, systems, schools, and the online world are working for children.
If we want to be successful in securing bold and effective commitments to keep children safe, we need to ensure that all key stakeholders are at the table.
We must ensure governments understand and use their power to unlock unprecedented progress in keeping children safe. And we need to ensure that many perspectives, including researchers, decion-makers, program implementers, government leaders, youth, and public survivor advocates' perspectives are informing outcomes in November.
100 days away from the Global Conference, the time is now to make it count and make a difference in the lives of children worldwide.
*For the first Eswatini VACS, only data for females was collected.