Ban ‘licks’ at home

Former Independent Senator Diana Mahabir-Wyatt thinks the country should  consider outlawing the hitting of children in all circumstances.

The Chairman of the Coalition Against Domestic Violence was addressing the launch by the Office of the Attorney General of the Second Periodic Report of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago on the Convention of the Rights of the Child on Wednesday at the Hilton Trinidad. Saying that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child had said corporal punishment should be banned in schools, she noted that many countries like Sweden, Israel and Italy had actually banned the hitting of children in schools and moreso in their homes. She said hitting children would not curb, but increase, violent tendencies, saying: “We have an increasingly violent society and people calling for the return of corporal punishment is a way to lead to an even more violent society. A lot of countries have legislated for a complete ban on hitting, in schools or at home or anywhere. Maybe we should consider this.  “While the rest of the world is moving away from corporal punishment, we seem to be determined to create an even more violent society than we have.”

One stumbling block to eliminating corporal punishment, she said, was that many teachers (and parents) had not been taught non-violent methods of disciplining children. She said: “We’ve got a long way to go.” Mahabir-Wyatt said that while the country had enacted much legislation to implement the Convention on the Rights of the Child, many concrete measures were lacking. “We have no Children’s Authority. There is no infrastructure for residential care for victims of incest and sexual abuse. Incidents of sexual abuse are ballooning but are not reported because people’s attitude is ‘what’s the use?’ The orphanages are already full and they require a court order to get into. Help for street children comes mainly from relatives or cash-strapped NGOs. “We don’t have a Family Court although we are closer thanks to the efforts of the Attorney General. But even the Family Court won’t deal with domestic abuse, which mostly involve children, because there are too many cases. We have not gone far enough in protecting the rights of the child.”