Corporal Punishment in Nepalese School Children: Facts, Legalities and Implications

Abstract

While the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) demands that children be respected as human
beings with the right to dignity and physical integrity, in Nepal corporal punishment is often considered
necessary to children’s upbringing, to facilitate learning and to instill discipline in the children. The
existence of this cruel practice towards children is attributed to the weak national policy, unhealthy
academic competition among the schools, poorly trained teachers, superstitious traditional beliefs and
hierarchical social structure. Consequently, the children are doomed to suffer this practice resulting in
negative physical, mental and social welfare. Besides corporal punishment, sexual abuse in school
going children seems to be frequent but mostly unreported. This is high time we eliminated this violence
against children in schools and it calls for holistic approach. For this, it is necessary to pursue a set code
of conduct and raise awareness among the teachers for the child rights in order to stop undignified,
inhuman and undisciplined tradition. The awareness and capacity of the health professionals to deal with
complexities of the child abuse also needs to be promoted. Furthermore, the need of improvements in
the national laws and their proper implementation is a longstanding challenge for the governmental and
nongovernmental organizations.

Key words: child abuse; child rights; corporal punishment; psychological

DOI: 10.3126/jnps.v30i2.2929

J. Nepal Paediatr. Soc. May-August, 2010 Vol 30(2) 98-109