Violence Against Children: Making Human Rights Real

Violence Against Children adopts in its title the exhortation of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, "Making Human Rights Real," which also represents the leitmotif of the book. It examines the prevalence of violence against children in Africa, the Asia Pacific Region, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and in the United States, and explores major ways of its prevention. Making human rights real engenders the challenge of helping all children to be free from violence and to lead a life replete with genuine nurture and the elimination of all violence. Only in this manner will the goal of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development ―target 16.2―be achieved and the child as a rights-bearing individual realized in her/his fullness.

The specially commissioned chapters that make up the volume have been written by renowned scholars, researchers and advocates. They coalesce to provide an overview of the challenges facing children exposed to violence worldwide, and they advance discussions of the measures which are available and necessary for the prevention of violence against children. The book is intended for policy-makers, researchers and students of the social sciences and human rights who are interested in ending all the widespread maltreatment of children in our societies and our time.

Gertrud Lenzer is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Children’s Studies at The City University of New York. She has published widely in the fields of philosophy and the social sciences, children’s rights and children’s studies. In 1991, Lenzer was both the founder of the interdisciplinary field of Children’s Studies as well as the Founding Chair of the Sociology of Children Section of the American Sociological Association. Her current work includes an appointment to the 16-member New York State Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights from 2015–2020.