Santo Domingo.- The office in
Santo Domingo of the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said this Tuesday that more than 63% of children aged 1 to 14 years old have been subjected to violent methods of discipline at home.
The prevalence increases in childhood from 3 and 4 years old, where these practices reach 70%, according to the organization.
The data corresponds to the dialogue ‘Analysis of the situation of the rights of children and adolescents in the face of violence in the Dominican Republic’, presented by Unicef with the collaboration of the
Universidad Iberoamericana (Unibe) and the National Research Network on Violence against Children and Adolescents.
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Physical abuse, humiliating discipline, and neglect continue to affect the lives of thousands of Dominican children and adolescents, especially within the family environment, with profound consequences for their well-being, mental health, and full exercise of rights, added Unicef.
Between 2018 and 2022, at least 212 children and adolescents were victims of intentional homicides in the country. In 2022 alone, 33 homicides of minors were recorded, according to a document sent by Unicef.
The representative of
Unicef in the Dominican Republic, the Spaniard Carlos Carrera Cordón, warned that “
when violence is normalized, the damage multiplies. Without reliable, comparable, and strategically used information, the country will continue to react late to a problem that demands prevention, institutional articulation, and a political will that translates into concrete actions”.
More than 3,400 children and adolescents were taken in by protection homes between 2018 and 2023 in the Dominican Republic, along with thousands of women victims of violence, which confirms the link between domestic violence and the direct risk to children.
“In the field of health, cases of physical abuse in children under five years of age increased by about 45% between 2021 and 2022, a trend that reinforces the urgency to act”, Carrera specified.
From her side, the rector of Unibe, Odile Camilo Vincent, said that violence against children cannot continue to be addressed with fragmented data or isolated responses.
“The academy has the responsibility to produce rigorous, useful, and timely evidence that contributes to public decisions capable of effectively protecting children and adolescents”, the teacher pointed out.
The conference revealed that there is fragmentation, low comparability, and limited use of the available information on the subject in the country, which makes it difficult for public policies, programs, and budgets to effectively respond to the real magnitude of the problem.
Unicef stated that the dialogue is part of ‘Data Matters’, an ongoing campaign that it maintains in the Dominican Republic aimed at highlighting statistics on the situation of children and adolescents, and promoting public decisions, accountability, and more timely institutional responses to the violence affecting children and adolescents.
