In countries where child abuse is legally accepted, there is still a long way to go, since legal acceptance is added to social acceptance. We are glad to know that in Honduras physical punishment is already prohibited, thus taking another step in the eradication of this abuse.
Until now, only three countries in Latin America prohibited physical punishment: Uruguay, Venezuela and Costa Rica, and now Honduras joins this necessary prohibition.
Save the Children and other NGOs have participated in the consultations, revisions and drafts to press for a reform of the law that included the mention of “humiliating physical punishment”.
End physical punishment At home, in schools and anywhere, it involves legal reforms and various initiatives that help change social attitudes and practices, some of them too rooted and that accept abuse as normal.
Only this explains that, according to Save the Children, three out of four children experience and live with violent discipline methods in their own home and only one in ten children live in a country where physical and humiliating punishments are prohibited in spaces of alternative care (other than family home).
Abuse kills 80,000 children a year in Latin America, but it is not a problem with borders or exclusive to any continent. We recently learned that more than 18 million children suffer abuse in Europe, according to WHO.
In the defense of children's rights it becomes necessary the prohibition of child abuse, as Honduras has now done. We hope that the list of legally intolerant countries with this punishment will continue to grow, since it is unacceptable in any case and place.
