Unfinished Business: The progress in policies to end violence against children

Each year, one billion boys and girls are victims of violence, robbing them of their innocence and leaving lifelong scars. Governments have promised to end violence against children, but although there has been progress in some areas, other areas have regressed or stalled. A legal patchwork is leaving children behind. 

This report builds on World Vision’s 2019 report, Small Cracks, Big Gaps, which highlighted how lack of sustained implementation of commitments from governments allows violence against children to persist. This new report aims to shed light on the current state of policy commitments to end violence against children in 21 randomly selected countries. Although the countries are different, 5 years later our findings are the same. No surveyed country has done enough to end violence by 2030. 

Not a single country reviewed has fully outlawed, and enforces, a prohibition on all forms of violence against children. While countries, such as Chile, Indonesia, and Zambia have fully outlawed it, the law is not fully implemented. Other countries like Lesotho have left numerous loopholes on areas such as sexual abuse. In some of the 8 criteria assessed, countries have made 0% progress towards outlawing, preventing, and reporting violence against children, and in general, countries in West Africa are the majority in the bottom of the table for each of the 8 criteria we examined. The same region has the highest rates of child marriage, and second highest rates of child labour in the world.