UN backs campaign on violence against children

The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon has said that an estimated US $440 billion is lost yearly to violence against children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ki-moon stated this at the launch of the Lagos state government’s end violence against child abuse campaign by the ministry for women affairs and poverty alleviation in partnership with United Nations International Children Education Fund (UNICEF), on Wednesday February 24. READ ALSO: FG deplore proliferation of sub-standard schools Ki-moon who was represented by his special representative on violence against children, Santo Pais identified four fundamental goals which the federal government must pursue urgently if it must succeed in its recent offensive on violence against children. These include a child-focused, multidisciplinary and time-bound national and state-level strategy; an explicit ban on all forms of violence against children backed by effective enforcement; increased efforts to make violence against children socially unacceptable and the establishment of a sound data and research system. He noted that an estimated US$7 trillion is lost each year due to violence in childhood, equivalent to 8 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP).