The Jamaican government has been mandated by the international community to ban corporal punishment in homes by an organisation that disregards the country’s religious views and public opinion on the matter.
The mandate has been given by the global movement End Corporal Punishment, whose advisory committee comprises representatives from UNICEF, the World Health Organisation, and Save the Children. According to the organisation, so far, 66 states have fully prohibited corporal punishment, and 27 more states have committed to reforming their laws to achieve a complete legal ban. Jamaica has been listed as one of the 27 states.
It means that despite recent pronouncements by the Andrew Holness-led government that no decision has been made to ban corporal punishment in the home, a public commitment has already been given to the global community that there will be legislation to explicitly prohibit all forms of corporal punishment of children, however light, in all settings, including the home.
“A commitment to achieving prohibition in a specific setting, for example, in schools, is certainly welcome, but it is not enough to meet states’ human rights obligations and to guarantee children the protection from violence they deserve,” the organisation said on its website.
The organisation has made it clear that societies are moving on from seeing children as their parents’ property to seeing them as people in their own right and that politicians must lead and not follow public opinion on the matter.
The country report for Jamaica produced by End Corporal Punishment noted that, so far, the government has expressed its commitment to prohibiting corporal punishment in all settings through several statements, including one made by the prime minister before the House of Representatives in July 2021. At the time, Prime Minister Andrew Holness told lawmakers that violence against children should not be tolerated.
“In the same way we have addressed and condemned other forms of violence in this House, we must unequivocally, loudly, and resolutely condemn violence against children,” he said.
Statements and public efforts made by the prime minister and members of his government on corporal punishment are being monitored by the global committee. In coordination with End Corporal Punishment, UNICEF country teams also monitor the laws in 154 countries related to corporal punishment in homes, daycares, schools, alternative care, and penal institutions. Changes to these laws are updated annually in UNICEF’s Country Strategic Indicators database.
Holness and his administration are now in a tight spot as the global organisation wants more than just talk; they want laws to be implemented to ban corporal punishment in the home. The global commitment to do so is by 2030.
“The near universal acceptance of violence in childrearing necessitates clarity in law that no degree or kind of corporal punishment is acceptable or lawful. Prohibition should be enacted of all corporal punishment in all settings, including the family home and all settings where adults have authority over children, together with explicit repeal of the common law defence,” the organisation explicitly stated.
Last week, Justice Minister Delroy Chuck received public backlash after announcing that the government is on a mission to outlaw corporal punishment in homes.
“It is wrong! In other words, we must not use straps and whips, and belts, especially belt buckles, to beat any child. Every parent must learn to scold the child, even to deprive the child of some form of activity or put them in the corner to stand up, and I know it’s difficult for parents to really challenge their children to be on the right path, but I dare say that corporal punishment rarely works,” the minister said.
Souce: Andrew Holness Facebook page
The minister made the pronouncements during his main address at the Ministry of Justice’s Child Diversion Forum at the Spanish Court Hotel in recognition of Child Month 2024. Of note is the fact that the child diversion programme was developed with the assistance of UNICEF in 2020. The international organisation has provided both technical and financial support for the programme. In 2020, UNICEF gave a $10 million grant towards this initiative. Minister Chuck was present during the announcement of the grant funding. UNICEF also finances and supports several other initiatives in Jamaica.
“The government intends to outlaw any form of corporal punishment. We have done so in the schools, and we want to do it in the homes because it is wrong, it doesn’t help the child, and, as far as we’re concerned, it’s much better to speak, perhaps, in a strong language to the child rather than to be slapping the child, pinching the child, twisting the child here, and using all sorts of punishment to get behaviour deemed appropriate by the parent,” Chuck had said during the forum.
Parents have not taken kindly to Chuck’s pronouncements, and on Sunday, the Association of Christian Communicators and Media (ACCM) issued a press release stating that the government’s stance on corporal punishment was an overreach.
“This effort to curtail longstanding and acceptable disciplinary tools available to parents is a direct overreach by the government and can only be seen as an effort to replace the role of parents in the home,” the ACCM said, while noting that the family remains the foremost and primary unit of socialisation and the responsibility for the discipline of children must remain in and with the home.
The ACCM said that while the abuse of children must never be condoned and that the long arm of the law must bring to justice any parent who abuses his or her child, slapping a child appropriately as part of disciplinary measures is not considered abuse.
“The government has already demonstrated its inability to handle disciplinary issues in our schools, and it is expanding its reach into homes. This must not be accepted by the wider population. We have taken all the attitudes and cultures from the United States and adopted them into Jamaican reality. It is time for us to step back and look at what our parents did and the success they had in raising generations to love and honour God, love each other, love the country, and live decent lives. We need to train parents to be parents and to do what is good for us and our children,” head of the ACCM Family and Gender Subcommittee, Dr. Patience Alonge, said.
Interestingly, the United States makes the largest donation to UNICEF. In 2022, for example, total contributions to UNICEF were US$9.3 billion. The US government provided US$1.286 billion in funding. Both the World Health Organisation and UNICEF are UN agencies/bodies. The US remains the largest donor to the United Nations.
This week, the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) issued a press release as many parents took to social media to defend the use of corporal punishment. It said that in light of discussions in the public domain, the government wanted to clarify “that no decision has been made to ban corporal punishment in the home.”
The Prime Minister’s Office stated that the National Commission on Violence Prevention (NCVP), which was established by Holness and is chaired by Professor Maureen Samms-Vaughan, has been tasked with conducting a multi-dimensional examination of societal violence, “ensuring that all voices are heard and are considered.” The OPM said, “The report of the NCVP will be a key driver to inform a national conversation.”
Checks by Freedom Come Rain has revealed that Samms-Vaughan, a prominent and well-respected child development specialist, has undertaken a number of consultancies for UNICEF and other international development partners. She has also received funding for research from these partners. One well-documented partnership was the UNICEF-funded comprehensive mapping of services for children with congenital Zika syndrome.
Despite the government’s about-turn this week, Holness had already indicated in January this year that a total ban on corporal punishment was among the recommendations of the National Violence Prevention Commission, based on preliminary data from the Commission.
“So, the government has put in place a Commission to study this whole business of violence. And there are some recommendations that will come. There are a few of them, for example, a recommendation that has been about for a long time, but the Commission has studied it in detail, and the recommendation is that there should be a total ban on corporal punishment,” Holness said at the time.
