Child Abuse Defined

Defining Child Maltreatment

The International Child Abuse Network (Yes ICAN) takes their definition of child abuse and neglect from both the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), Public Law 104-235), as it has been amended and reauthorized in March 2003, and as amended by the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act of 2003 and the Report of the Consultation on Child Abuse Prevention,World Health Organization, Social Change and Mental Health, Violence and Injury Prevention. March 1999

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Child Abuse Simply Stated

Simply stated, Child abuse is the bad treatment of a child under the age of 18 by a parent, caretaker, someone living in their home or someone who works with or around children. Abuse of a child is anything that causes injury or puts the child in danger of physical injury. Child abuse can be physical (such as burns or broken bones), sexual (such as touching of private parts or incest), or emotional (such as belittling or calling the child names). Neglect happens when a parent or responsible caretaker fails to provide adequate supervision, food, clothing, shelter or other basics for a child. Child abuse is any action (or lack of) which endangers or impairs a child’s physical, mental or emotional health and development. Child abuse occurs in different ways. All forms of abuse and neglect are harmful to the child.

Child abuse may be:

• Physical - hitting, shaking, burns, human bites, strangulation.
• Emotional - constant disapproval, belittling, constant teasing.
• Sexual - fondling, the showing of private parts by an adult, sexual intercourse, oral and anal sex, forcing a child to watch while others have sexual intercourse, incest, pornography.
• Neglect - absence of adequate food, shelter, emotional and physical security, and medical care.

Physical abuse is any physical injury to a child that is not accidental. Emotional and psychological abuse is when a child is not nurtured and is not provided with love and security.

Psychological abuse occurs when children are not provided with the necessary environment to develop mentally and/or emotionally.

Sexual abuse is when the child is involved in any sexual activity with an adult or another child who is either older or more powerful.

Neglect is depriving a child of their basic needs. These include food, clothing, warmth and shelter, emotional and physical security and protection, medical and dental care, cleanliness, education, and supervision.

If you suspect that a child you know or you are someone who is experiencing any of these types of abuse, please check out our more detailed definitions and indicators.

You might also call your local child abuse information or reporting number found in your telephone book or through your telephone information service.

For those living within the United States, our web site provides you with information to report child abuse in each state.

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Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA)

The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act* defines child abuse and neglect as: “at a minimum, any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker, which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation, or an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm.”

For CAPTA, the term child is someone who has not reached the age of 18; or (except in the case of sexual abuse) the age specified by the child protection law of the State in which the child resides;

Within the minimum standards set by CAPTA, each State is responsible for providing its own definitions of child abuse and neglect. Most States recognize four major types of maltreatment: neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and emotional abuse. Although any of the forms of child maltreatment may be found separately, they often occur in combination.

The examples provided below are for general informational purposes only. Not all States' definitions will include all of the examples listed below, and individual States' definitions may cover additional situations not mentioned here.

Neglect is failure to provide for a child's basic needs. Neglect may be:

• Physical (e.g., failure to provide necessary food or shelter, or lack of appropriate supervision)
• Medical (e.g., failure to provide necessary medical or mental health treatment)
• Educational (e.g., failure to educate a child or attend to special education needs)
• Emotional (e.g., inattention to a child's emotional needs, failure to provide psychological care, or permitting the child to use alcohol or other drugs)

These situations do not always mean a child is neglected. Sometimes cultural values, the standards of care in the community, and poverty may be contributing factors, indicating the family is in need of information or assistance. When a family fails to use information and resources, and the child's health or safety is at risk, then child welfare intervention may be required.

Physical Abuse is physical injury (ranging from minor bruises to severe fractures or death) as a result of punching, beating, kicking, biting, shaking, throwing, stabbing, choking, hitting (with a hand, stick, strap, or other object), burning, or otherwise harming a child. Such injury is considered abuse regardless of whether the caretaker intended to hurt the child.

Sexual Abuse includes activities by a parent or caretaker such as fondling a child's genitals, penetration, incest, rape, sodomy, indecent exposure, and exploitation through prostitution or the production of pornographic materials.

CAPTA defines the term “sexual abuse” as: “the employment, use, persuasion, inducement, enticement, or coercion of any child to engage in, or assist any other person to engage in, any sexually explicit conduct or simulation of such conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of such conduct; or the rape, and in cases of caretaker or inter-familial relationships, statutory rape, molestation, prostitution, or other form of sexual exploitation of children, or incest with children.”

Emotional Abuse, (also known as: verbal abuse, mental abuse, and psychological maltreatment), is a pattern of behavior that impairs a child's emotional development or sense of self-worth. This may include constant criticism, threats, or rejection, as well as withholding love, support, or guidance. Emotional abuse is often difficult to prove and, therefore, CPS may not be able to intervene without evidence of harm to the child. Emotional abuse is almost always present when other forms are identified.

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World Health Organization* Definition of Child Abuse

Taken from the Report on the Consultation on Child Abuse Prevention Geneva, March 29-31, 1999

The focus of the consultation as initially child abuse in the family context, yet the pronounced overlap between child abuse in the family and the broader society necessitates a broadening of the field of view. It also recognized that one definition of child abuse cannot serve all purposes; for example a definition that would serve to increase awareness differs from that of service provision, and the definition for legal purposes differs from that for research. For that reason a diagnosis must be adaptable and include descriptions of different types or classifications which can be adapted and/or expanded on as is appropriate for the setting.

A child is defined by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) as “Every human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable under the child majority is attained earlier. Throughout the consultation the importance of the CRC in the area of child abuse was emphasized. While Article 19 of the convention specifically addresses child abuse and recommends a broad outline for its identification, reporting, investigation, treatment, follow-up and prevention. Other articles in the convention emphasize the important role of the healthcare community in monitoring and reporting child abuse, as a channel of advocacy and direct technical support in other countries. The convention in discussing multiple rights and responsibilities, emphasizes that rights refers to the child’s “…social, spiritual and moral wellbeing and physical and mental health and to achievement of fullest possible physical development in all areas.” 

Preamble to the Definition
Child Abuse has serious physical and psychosocial consequences which adversely affect health. It refers to any act or failure to act that violates the rights of the child, that endangers his or her optimum health, survival and development.

Awareness of cultural factors must remain high as they influence all aspects from the occurrence and definition through its treatment and successful prevention. Any intervention, to be successful whether for data gather, prevention or even increasing public awareness, must take into consideration the cultural environment in which it is to occur. Background or baseline conditions beyond the control of families or caretakers, such as poverty, inaccessible healthcare, inadequate nutrition, unavailability of education can be contributing factors to child abuse. Social upheaval and instability, conflict and war may also contribute to increases in child abuse and neglect.

General Definition
Child abuse or maltreatment constitutes all forms of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect or negligent treatment or commercial or other exploitation, resulting in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, survival, development or dignity in the context of a relationship of responsibility, trust or power.

Physical abuse
Physical abuse of a child is that which results in actual or potential physical harm from an interaction or lack of an interaction, which is reasonably within the control of a parent or person in a position of responsibility, power or trust. There may be a single or repeated incidents.

Emotional abuse
Emotional abuse includes the failure to provide a developmentally appropriate, supportive environment, including the availability of a primary attachment figure, so that the child can develop a stable and full range of emotional and social competencies commensurate with her or his personal potentials and in the context of the society in which the child dwells. There may also be acts towards the child that cause or have a high probability of causing harm to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development. These acts must be reasonably within the control of the parent or person in a relationship of responsibility, trust or power. Acts include restriction of movement, patterns of belittling, denigrating, scapegoating, threatening, scaring, discriminating, ridiculing or other non-physical forms of hostile or rejecting treatment.

Neglect and negligent treatment
Neglect is the failure to provide for the development of the child in all spheres: health, education, emotional development, nutrition, shelter, and safe living conditions, in the context of resources reasonably available to the family or caretakers and causes or has a high probability of causing harm to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development. This includes the failure to properly supervise and protect children from harm as much as is feasible.

Sexual Abuse
Child sexual abuse is the involvement of a child in sexual activity that he or she does not fully comprehend, is unable to give informed consent to, or for which the child is not developmentally prepared and cannot give consent, or that violate the laws or social taboos of society. Child sexual abuse is evidenced by this activity between a child and an adult or another child who by age or development is in a relationship of responsibility, trust or power, the activity being intended to gratify or satisfy the needs of the other person. This may include but is not limited to:

• The inducement or coercion of a child to engage in any unlawful sexual
  activity.
• The exploitative use of child in prostitution or other unlawful sexual practices.
• The exploitative use of children in pornographic performances and materials.

Exploitation
Commercial or other exploitation of a child refers to use of the child in work or other activities for the benefit of others. This includes, but is not limited to, child labour and child prostitution. These activities are to the detriment of the child’s physical or mental health, education, or spiritual, moral or social-emotional development.

pp. 13-17, Report of the Consultation on Child Abuse Prevention, Geneva, 29-31 March 1999, World Health Organization, Social Change and Mental Health, Violence and Injury Prevention.

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Child labour situation in Nepal

Child labour situation

Child labour remains a major economic and social phenomenon in Nepal. According to the National Child Labour Survey undertaken in 1997 , 1.660 million children (26.6 per cent) out of the total 6.225 million children aged between 5 and 14 years in the country are economically active.

• Among the 1.660 million economically active children, boys (54 per cent) outnumber girls (46 per cent);
• Many of these children do not go to schools (14.54 per cent of the boys and 25.96 per cent of the girls) ;
• The large part (94.7 per cent, 1.576 million) of the economically active children are engaged in the agriculture sector, mostly as unpaid family workers and partly as forced labour attached to their parents under debt bondage or similar other exploitative labour. Besides agriculture, working children are mainly involved in the services sector (27,000) and communications and transportation sector (26,000) ;
• Based on several studies conducted under the IPEC Time-Bound Programme (TBP) , it is estimated that there are 127,143 children working in the worst forms of child labour — as bonded labourers, ragpickers, porters, domestic workers, in mines, in the carpet sector, and being trafficked. According to the same studies, the children involved in these forms of child labour start working between the ages of 10 and 14. In addition, more than one-third of them are illiterate, and a majority are school dropouts, who have been brought to their present workplace by their parents or relatives. It also appears that they all come from landless and relatively large families. Finally, more than 80 per cent of children trapped in the worst forms of child labour have migrated for work. With the exception of children bonded into agricultural labour and children working as long distance porters in the rural areas of Nepal, the vast majority of children work in urban areas.

Factors that generate child labour in Nepal can be summarized as follows:

• On the demand side, while the society at large is aware of the ill effects of child labour, both to the individual child as well as to the nation, the existing societal attitude remains largely indifferent to it. Legal provisions on safeguarding child rights and preventing child labour are inadequate in enforcement and children continue to be hired as child labourers. In rural areas, children work mostly in the agricultural sector, while in urban areas, they can be found in almost all kinds of work requiring manual labour;
• The supply side of this is characterised by illiteracy of the parents, lack of access to as well as low perceived value of education, disharmony and diminishing family support, subsistence livelihoods that push families, particularly in rural areas, to send their children to work;
• The civil war was another factor contributing to child labour in Nepal. In rural areas, many families prefered to send their children to urban areas for fear of them being caught in the cross-fire, or becoming a victim of the security forces or Maoists. As a result, these children enter the child labour market and very often end up in the worst forms of child labour.

  

  Girl Crossing stone By Hammer

Malnutrition and Diseases in Nepal

In many developing countries like Nepal, children die from malnutrition and diseases before they reach adolescence. Those who survive lead an extremely hard for life, especially if they are orphaned. Many children have been adversely affected by the past ten years of internal war. 

At least 10,000 children have been orphaned, and more than a 100,000 children forced to leave their villages. Most of the orphans live with relatives, who themselves work very hard just to survive.

In a country as poor as Nepal It is rarely possible for relatives in small subsistence hamlets to bear the burden of orphans. Apart from their economic condition the cultural beliefs which exist in the community makes the life of orphan's very helpless and hopeless.

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Right to education

The right to education is a universal entitlement to education, a right that is recognized as a human right. According to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights the right to education includes the right to free, compulsory primary education for all, an obligation to develop secondary education accessible to all, in particular by the progressive introduction of free secondary education, as well as an obligation to develop equitable access to higher education, ideally by the progressive introduction of free higher education. The right to education also includes a responsibility to provide basic education for individuals who have not completed primary education. In addition to these access to education provisions, the right to education encompasses the obligation to rule out discrimination at all levels of the educational system, to set minimum standards and to improve quality of education.

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Child Labour - Major Issue of World

Child labour is one of the major issues in many parts of the world including Nepal. An estimate in 1996 showed that about 250 million children of ages between 5 to 14 years were working full-time or part-time. Most of these working children were in developing countries, over 50% of them in South Asia.

Nepal is one of the countries with a very high proportion of child labour. An estimate based on a Labour Force Survey in 1998/99 showed that about 2 million (41%) children out of the total population of 4.9 million of ages between 5 to 14 years were involved in work.

Awareness towards the gravity of child labour problem is a relatively new development in Nepal as in many other parts of the world. Though children’s health and education has remained a priority of Government of Nepal (GN) for decades, it was only during the 1990s that the magnitude of the problem of child labour was realized. Since the early 1990s the issue of child rights and child labour has received greater attention which is being reflected in national policies and programs. Because of the social and economic circumstances of the country, child labour issue in Nepal is rather difficult and complex. Nepal is one of the least developed countries. About 90% of the population in Nepal live in rural areas. About 81% of the total population depends on agriculture, mostly subsistence farming. About 42% Nepalese live under the absolute poverty[3], with income less than one dollar per day. Because most of the adults are illiterate (adult illiteracy rate about 50%), the capacity of most families to undertake alternative economic activities or to organise themselves to develop social and economic safety measures are seriously constrained. Accordingly, GN has adopted poverty reduction as an important strategy to overcome the problem of child labour.

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