16.2.1 Children Experiencing Physical Punishment and/or Psychological Aggression by Caregivers

Target 16.2: End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children

Goal 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

Custodian Organization: United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

Tier Classification: Tier II

To facilitate the implementation of the global indicator framework, all indicators are classified by the IAEG-SDGs (Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goals Indicators) into three tiers on the basis of their level of methodological development and the availability of data at the global level, as follows:

Tier I: Indicator is conceptually clear, has an internationally established methodology and standards are available, and data are regularly produced by countries for at least 50 per cent of countries and of the population in every region where the indicator is relevant.

Tier II: Indicator is conceptually clear, has an internationally established methodology and standards are available, but data are not regularly produced by countries.

Tier III: No internationally established methodology or standards are yet available for the indicator, but methodology/standards are being (or will be) developed or tested.

Source: United Nations Statistical Division

Rationale: All too often, children are raised using methods that rely on physical force or verbal intimidation to punish unwanted behaviours and encourage desired ones. The use of violent discipline with children represent a violation of their rights. Physical discipline and psychological aggression tend to overlap and frequently occur together, exacerbating the short- and long-term harm they inflict. The consequences of violent discipline range from immediate effects to long-term damage that children carry well into adulthood. Violent discipline is the most widespread, and socially accepted, type of violence against children.

Limitations: There is an existing, standardized and validated measurement tool (the Parent-Child version of the Conflict Tactics Scale, or CTSPC) that is widely accepted and has been implemented in a large number of countries, including high-income countries.

Definitions of both physical punishment and psychological aggression will need to be very clearly defined for countries but this should not be a problem as there is a wealth of available literature and research on the violent punishment of children and General Comment No.13 on the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) also provides a definition for “corporal” or “physical” punishment as well as “mental violence”.

Source: United Nations Statistical Division

Data Source: Data for this indicator was primarily collected from the United Nations Statistics Division’s Open SDG Data Hub. National level data is provided to the United Nations Statistics Division by the respective nation, unless otherwise noted. To learn more about the data used in this portal, visit the about page.

Data is accurate as of October 31, 2018.