Partnership head vows to end violence against children

September 18, 2017

TOKYO- The Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children is an initiative aimed at stopping all forms of violence against children, its director, Susan Bissell, said in a recent interview in Tokyo.

The End Violence partnership was established in 2015 to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals, an action agenda for the whole of the international community to meet between 2016 and 2030.

The partnership's goal is to "end abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children," Bissell said.

There are many groups in the world that aim to protect children, ranging from UNICEF and nongovernmental organizations including Save the Children to administrative bodies in each country such as child consultation centers in Japan.

UNICEF focuses its activities on developing countries while leaving developed countries to handle issues of child abuse and bullying at schools on their own.

With globalization sweeping the world, Bissell said that all the groups have come together to examine the strategies that they use to keep children safe from violence.

Bissell said that the groups realized that they would be "more powerful in partnership than working in their own silos" thanks to the UN goals.

She said that regardless of whether countries are developing or developed, academic experts, private companies, citizen groups and government bodies should "work more (in a) horizontal way rather than the top-down way" from UN agencies.

Bissell, who previously worked for UNICEF, has served as director for End Violence, whose secretariat is hosted by the UN agency in New York, since July last year.

Referring to trafficking in children, Bissell said they are sold somewhere in this world at this moment for domestic and agriculture labor, as well as for sexual exploitation. Children go through one country to another and Japan is not an exception, she said.

End Violence plans to host a meeting in Stockholm in Feb. 14-15 next year to bring together representatives from countries around the globe to discuss ways to wipe out violence against children.

According to Bissell, the partnership has collected successful examples of action. For example, when a town in Brazil stopped sales of alcohol at night, violence against children went down, she said. Jiji Press