National Assembly supervises the prevention of child abuse

The National Assembly spent the whole day today (May 27) conducting supreme supervision on this content at the 9th Session. The working session was broadcast live on radio and television for voters and people nationwide to follow.

As of June 30, 2019, the country had 24,776,733 children, accounting for 25.75% of the total population (including 12,915,365 boys, accounting for 52.13%; 11,861,368 girls, accounting for 47.87%). In the 2018-2019 school year, the total number of students studying at preschools and general education levels was 21,394,793 students.

In recent years, with the attention of all sectors and levels, the entire political system and society, the work of protecting, caring for and educating children has had positive changes and achieved many important achievements, ensuring increasingly better implementation of children's rights.

Typical are the right to protection, health care, the right to education, learning, talent development, and the right to privacy. Up to now, all children under 6 years old are provided with free health insurance by the State; nearly 100% of children under 1 year old participate in expanded immunization; nearly 100% of 5-year-old children go to kindergarten; the State does not collect tuition fees for primary school students; about 90% of children in special circumstances enjoy social assistance policies. The rate of children of school age who have never attended school or have dropped out of school has decreased sharply over the past 20 years, from 20.9% in 1999 to 16.4% in 2009 and 8.3% in 2019...

However, monitoring shows that the situation of children still has issues of concern, and the risk of child abuse is still very high. Because 8.3% of children of school age are not currently attending school. The higher the level of education, the higher this rate.

The number of children in special circumstances is still high: 1,773,112 children, accounting for 7.16% of the total number of children. About 33,000 children do not live in a family environment. The number of children with divorced parents in recent years has been very large, with an average of about 70,000 children with divorced parents each year...

It is worth noting that from January 1, 2015 to June 30, 2019, the whole country discovered and handled criminally and administratively 8,442 cases of child abuse with 8,709 abused children.

The monitoring team found that the number of abused children discovered and handled in the period 2011-2014 was 7,211 children; the number of abused children in the period 2015-2018 was 7,309 children, an increase of 98 abused children. Notably, in the first 6 months of 2019, the number of abused children increased dramatically, with 1,400 children, nearly 80% of the number of abused children in the whole year of 2018 (1,779 children), on average, every 01 day nationwide, there were 07 abused children.

According to the Monitoring Team, this sudden increase partly reflects the fact that child abuse cases have increased, partly because people and children are more aware of reporting and denouncing child abuse, and at the same time, the work of detecting and handling child abuse has also been strengthened compared to the previous period.

Among the forms of child abuse that emerged and caused the most outrage during this period was sexual abuse with 6,364 cases and 6,432 child victims, accounting for 75.38% of the total number of child abuse cases received and handled by the police at all levels. In particular, in many localities, the number of child sexual abuse cases accounted for over 90% of the total number of child abuse cases. Child violence also occurred frequently, with serious consequences.

Through monitoring, it is shown that there are still many cases of child abuse that have not been detected in a timely and complete manner for handling, especially acts of violence that cause physical and mental harm to children. Many cases of child abuse occur in private, isolated places; many cases occur in families, with few reports; many cases of abuse occur over a long period of time before being discovered; there are cases where parents know their children have been abused but do not report them for various reasons...

The monitoring team found that the number of children working illegally under the provisions of the labor law is still large, but it is not forced labor according to the International Conventions on Forced Labor and has decreased significantly compared to previous years, lower than the general rate of some countries in the region. Through monitoring in some localities, it shows that most children who participate in early labor have difficult family economic circumstances, the purpose of working is to earn extra income to support the family, so their parents agree and local authorities have difficulty in bringing them back home; there need to be many comprehensive socio-economic solutions to fundamentally resolve the situation of children working illegally under the provisions of the law./.