Owanbe Community joins the world today in the celebration of International Day against Violence and Bullying at School Including Cyber bullying under the theme “Tackling cyber bullying and other forms of online violence involving children and young people”.
It is sadden to note that cloth which ought to be one of the three basic human necessities is being used as a source of bullying to school students. Report by National Education Union reveals that students are avoiding school for fear of being bullied over their worn-out clothes.
The union also reveals that non-uniform days had become “very sad days” for poorer children who are noticed by their classmates, adding that some pupils are reluctant to attend on those days because they are being shamed by their fellow pupils for not having “nice clothes or shoes”. This is an act of psychological bullying.
According to UNESCO, almost one in three students is being bullied by their peers at school at least once in every month, and goes further to show that a sexual violence against a student is more likely to be perpetuated by a schoolmate than a teacher, especially for boys. It also shows evidence that cyber bullying has been on the rise in various regions during the pandemic and stressed that children, in particular girls at the age of 11 to 13 years, are increasingly at risk of being targeted by criminal sex predators.
Violence against Children and child and bullying in form of corporal punishment used by African parents at home has been long believed to be a form disciplinary action rooted in African culture, but a claim by the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children reveals that “the beating of children was brought to this continent through missionaries and missionary schools”.
The claim was also backed by Quaker Peace Centre in Cape Town, South-Africa, “from all the records that we can find, physical discipline of children was not in African culture before slavery,” stressing that “the missionaries, the colonizers and the slave traders are what brought corporal punishment to Africa.”
Children exposed to violence and all sorts of bullying are vulnerable to mental health issues, low quality life and behavioral imbalance. They are twice likely to feel lonely, unable to sleep at night and have the tendency to attempt suicide than those who are not bullied. They are three times more likely to feel like an outsider at school, twice likely to miss school and more likely to leave formal education after finishing secondary school than those who are not frequently bullied.
In relations to their effort towards curbing both physical and sexual violence against children, the education system has an important role to play in addressing online safety, digital citizenship and technology use, by providing children and young people with the knowledge and skills to identify online violence and how to protect themselves from its different forms, whether perpetrated by peers or adults.
We all at Owanbe Community therefore joins United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNESCO through the celebration of today’s International Day against Violence and Bullying at School Including Cyber bullying call on the attention of students, parents, members of the educational community, education authorities and a range of sectors and partners, including the tech industry, to encourage everyone to take a part in preventing online violence for the safety and wellbeing of children and youth.
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Ciao.
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