This is shocking
Every five minutes a child dies from violence. Every day, in every country, children are abused, beaten, raped and more. Too often, the abuser is someone the child knows and trusts. They may even work for an organisation that’s meant to help children. A sports club, school, faith institution, aid organisation or peacekeeping force. But these people abuse their power and the child’s trust.
Abuse can happen anywhere
- In conflicts and crises across the world, humanitarian staff and peacekeeping personal have subjected children to rape, trafficking, violence and abuse, demanding sex for the basics of survival – food, shelter, education and medicine
- In sport, children have been subjected to all forms of abuse and violence including undue pressure to achieve high performance, sexual harassment and assaults, to child labour and trafficking
- In schools, hundreds of millions of children are harassed and abused with girls being particularly at risk
- In alternative care, children have faced systematic rape and sexual abuse; exploitation, including trafficking; physical violence; and psychological harm including isolation, the denial of affection and humiliating discipline
Look at the numbers
- A child dies every 5 minutes as a result of violence and abuse
- Almost 200 million children have been victims of sexual abuse
- Disabled children are between three or four times more likely to be subjected to violence and neglect
- An estimated 246 million children are harassed and abused on the way to, or at, school
That’s why Keeping Children Safe sets tough International Child Safeguarding Standards to ensure all organisations protect children from exploitation and abuse.
What we do
- Since 2001 Keeping Children Safe has worked to protect children from institutional abuse
- We support over 80 member organisations (and growing) to protect some of the world’s most at risk children
- Our capacity building programme has helped keep children safe in over 120 countries in the world
- We might be a small, independent not-for-profit, but our work impacts the lives of over 134 million children
More data
You can explore further data sources about child abuse here:
- WHO Child maltreatment data
- UNICEF’s Global Statistics on children’s protection from violence, exploitation and abuse (PDF)