FOREWORD
Every child deserves to grow up in a safe, peaceful, nurturing and enabling environment. But this is not the case for millions of children across the world that experience violence every day. Violence includes more than just physical abuse, but also things like forced labour, neglect and child marriage. The consequences are devastating for children, their communities and society as a whole. Violence against children erodes the very foundation of stable societies and threatens future sustainable and inclusive economic growth. This is why global leaders have made ending violence against children in all its forms a priority for transforming our world.
While commitments are strong, we still need to strengthen their implementation. But what will it take to do that? How much do we need to invest to end violence against children and how far are we from reaching that level of investment?
To date, few attempts have been made to systematically quantify and analyze available data on investment in this area. The sheer complexity of the issue has muddied the capacity to yield tangible, measurable indicators on investment linking expenditures to identifiable benefits. This report is an important step to challenge the status quo. While data on investments into ending violence against children remains extremely scarce, for the first time in history, we have managed to estimate annual investment made through Official Development Assistance (ODA) that was specifically targeted at ending violence against children. The estimate includes both projects specifically targeted to end violence against children as well as those that aim to do so along with addressing multiple problems such as gender-based violence, conflict and poverty.
By exposing a range of findings on ODA and ending violence against children—including specific amounts contributed toward different types of violence prevention—the report has launched what could be a revolutionary discourse around the quantification of aid toward ending one of the most persistent and pernicious of global problems.
As the UN Sustainable Development Goals have gone live and we look toward Agenda 2030 as a target date for eliminating all forms of violence against children worldwide, this report provides the exact kind of precision previously missing from all other analyses of efforts in this area. It takes the stance that donors should adopt a formula for tracking spending on violence against children and offers suggestions for methodologies that could be universally shared once agreed upon. It also shines a light on the donor and recipient countries of ODA investment in this area. It is data like this that will allow us to hold ourselves accountable to the noble goal of eliminating violence against children by 2030.
A glaring blind spot has finally been addressed and—with that—new possibilities for qualifying and quantifying efforts to combat violence against children are finally opening up, launching a new era, ripe with the hope of better and more sustainable results.
It is now time to take charge and move this initiative forward, fulfilling the obligation of the global community to account for the impact of its spending in real terms and ensuring the rights of all children to be free from violence.
Susan Bissell
Director:
The Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children
Trihadi Saptoadi
Director Partnership Leader – Impact and Engagement
World Vision International