At its 71^st session in October – November 2018, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women issued recommendations on corporal punishment of children:

• To the Bahamas, the Committee recommended the prohibition of corporal punishment of children in homes and schools as well as the strengthening of awareness-raising programmes promoting non-violent discipline.
• The Committee expressed concern to Mauritius for the limited scope of the prohibition of corporal punishment in the Child Protection Act 1995 (which only applies in schools) and recommended that the Government adopt legislation to explicitly prohibit corporal punishment of children in all settings.
• To Samoa, the Committee expressed concern that corporal punishment was still culturally accepted and practised in schools and that legislation still recognised a right to “reasonable punishment” to teachers, despite the existing prohibition of corporal punishment in the Education Act. It recommended the repeal of the right to administer “reasonable punishment”, that the Government ensure that the prohibition of corporal punishment in schools is monitored and enforced, and the strengthening of teacher training on non-violent discipline.

To Nepal, which prohibited all corporal punishment of children in September 2018, the Committee recommended that all acts of corporal punishment in schools are effectively investigated and prosecuted.

For further details, see the Global Initiative’s individual country reports for the Bahamas, Mauritius, Nepal and Samoa.

For further information on the obligation to prohibit corporal punishment under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and to see the Committee’s recommendations in full, see the Global Initiative’s page on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.