World Children’s Day 2024
Today is the United Nations World Children’s Day. 20 November marks the date in 1959 when the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. It is also the date in 1989 when the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
This year UNICEF Australia are encouraging everyone to celebrate child rights with a minute of loudness. Every child should have the chance to speak up about issues they care about. It’s their future, but too often their voices aren’t heard. Ove the course of my research career I have been fortunate to work on a number of projects which build the evidence base on children’s experiences of domestic, family and sexual violence.
Here, I share highlights from that work as part of an ongoing commitment to push for improved responses to children and young people as victim-survivors in their own right.
In 2022 I was fortunate to lead the ‘I believe you’ study which explored young Victorians lived experiences of navigating the family violence system. Our study found that children and young people interviewed unanimously agreed that current responses to young victim-survivors of family violence are inadequate.
Change continues to be urgently needed.
👉🏼 Read our study findings here: https://doi.org/10.26180/21709562.v2
In 2023, with Drs Rebecca Stewart and Jasmine McGowan, I published a report examining young Victorians’ (aged 16 to 20 years) self-reported experiences of gender-identity abuse, LGBTIQ+ identity abuse, and the cultural impacts of family violence victimisation.
For the young people in our study, identity abuse:
🔹was often perpetrated by multiple family members,
🔹was often unreported to anyone outside of the family and friends, and
🔹had significant immediate and long term impacts on the physical and emotional wellbeing of child victim-survivors.
Our study found that there is a critical need to improve awareness of different forms of identity-abuse and to build more effective supports across schools and the specialist service system.
👉🏼 Read our Report here: https://doi.org/10.26180/22191319.v1
Last month Hayley Boxall, Silke Meyer and I released new research on sibling to sibling violence in Australia. In our study of 303 young people who had experienced sibling violence before the age of 18 years old:
🔹58% said they had used sibling violence,
🔹60% said they had been subjected to sibling violence;
🔹18% said they experienced both victimisation & perpetration.
Our findings highlight the importance of early interventions for young people who use violence against their siblings.
👉🏼 Read our Summary Report here: https://doi.org/10.26180/27289644.v1
Together let’s use today, and everyday, to turn the volume up on issues that matter to children in Australia and globally!
