Addressing violence against children in Tanzania through a

Social Norms Approach

Case presented for the Advances in Social Norms and Social Change Course University of Pennsylvania July 2012

Georgina Mtenga

Violence Against Children in TanzaniaKey Facts – VACS 2009

Tanzanian Child Population is 22,416,000 (Under 18 years) – Total population is 44,841,000 (2010) World Bank

• Rates of sexual violence are high: 3 out of every 10 girls and 1 out of 7 boys have experience sexual violence prior to the age of 18. 1 out of 5 girls reported their first experience was forced sex when they were younger than 14 years old.

• Most sexual assaults occur in the home or school. Almost half of the time, sexual violence occurred in someone’s house often being someone known to the victim. Most sexual assaults occur in broad daylight.

• Most children do not report incidence of sexual abuse: About one half of girls and two thirds of boys do not tell anyone about their experience. Over 60% of girls give family or community reasons (with the most common reason being fear of abandonment or family separation) for not telling, while another 26% give personal reasons.

• Children are physically abused mostly by adults they know and trust: Nearly 60% of Tanzanian girls and boys who reported physical abuse (being punched, whipped or kicked) name a relative as the source, fathers and mothers were the most common perpetrators.

• The social expectation is that adults do no harm to children, which is contrary to the findings of the violence against children.

Full study report is available at http://www.unicef.org/media/files/VIOLENCE_AGAINST_CHILDREN_IN_TANZANIA_REPORT.pdf

Government commitment to action

High-level commitment from 4 Key Ministers to take action in response to the findings of the Survey – System based response

Social context of violence to children

• Generalized behavior affecting children from all social backgrounds

• No place is safe for children – homes, schools and within the community surroundings

• Most perpetrators are people children trust

• In schools corporal punishment is legally sanctioned by law

Current legality of corporal punishment HomeCorporal punishment is lawful in the home in Tanzania. Provisions against violence and abuse in the Penal Codes and other laws are not interpreted as prohibiting corporal punishment in childrearing. The Law of the Child Act (2009) states that parents should protect children from all forms of violence (article 9), includes beatings which cause harm in the definition of child abuse (article 3) and prohibits “torture, or other cruel, inhuman punishment or degrading treatment” (article 13). However, it allows for “justifiable” correction (article 13) and does not exclude all forms of corporal punishment from such correction.

SchoolsCorporal punishment is lawful in schools in mainland Tanzania under the National Corporal Punishment Regulations (1979) pursuant to article 60 of the National Education Act (1978), which authorizes the minister to make regulations “to provide for and control the administration of corporal punishment in schools”. The Law of the Child Act does not does not repeal this provision or prohibit corporal punishment in schools. Government guidelines in 2000 reduced the number of strokes from six to four and stated that only the heads of schools are allowed to administer the punishment, with penalties for teachers who flout these regulations.

Violence Against Children in Social Norms context

Violence Against Children

Corporal punishment

Is a social norm

Part of a script about good parenting

Sexual Abuse

Is not a Social Norm - BUT

Supported by a social norm ‘Culture of silence’

Creates pluralistic ignorance

Physical context of violence The script for child discipline

• Beating children is socially accepted and expected as part of child rearing to build self-control and good behavior

• Empirical expectation is parents will discipline their children through physical violence

• Normative expectation parents know that the society expects good parents to discipline their children appropriately to instill values

• Inter-generational normative belief - I was raised up that way

Sexual ViolenceUnderstanding the customs and beliefs

• Deep rooted social and personal beliefs, fears and taboos around sex and sexual relations

• Victims of sexual violence fear rejection within families if they talk about their experiences

• Adults are seen as good people who do no harm to children – moral standard

• Pluralistic ignorance – individual misperceive the attitude and behavior of relevant others in a way that reduce willingness to intervene

What has been done so far From a social norms perspective

• High-level political engagement to move the study from paper to practice through a Multi-Sectoral approach – the buy-in is critical for community interventions

• Public awareness messaging - primarily targeting general population, with broad messages without examining the relevant networks to determine the empirical and normative expectations

• Focused attention on disseminating the VAC findings rather that means to engage communities towards a new social norm – building protective environment for children

Revisiting our strategies – what can we improve

• Adopt a social norm approach with emphasis on engaging the relevant social networks to address empirical and normative expectations

• Refocus the script/change language; less about “Stop Violence Against Children” more about family and community values of care, protection, positive parenting and respect for children

• Address possible dissonance between culture of silence on sexual issues and willingness for people within relevant network to intervene on sexual violence

• Promote adoption of new social norm on positive parenting, intervening on sexual violence through organized diffusion approaches

Develop community response model

Create

communi

ty core

group

Engage commu

nity through relevant network groups

for value

deliberations

Adapting new social norm

through public

declaration and

sanctions and

rewards

Organized

Diffusion through community and social

marketing

approaches

Sustaining

social norm

harmonized with

effective legal system

Thank you