Learn Without Fear

40 Million Children Abuse Worldwide Each year
NNA(Fawzia Khan)----- The "Learn without Fear" Campaign was launched in 66 countries worldwide by plan. The campaign is about preventing all forms of violence against children in schools. This may include corporal punishment, sexual abuse, neglect, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, bullying, peer to peer violence, youth gangs, use of weapons and harassment on the journey to and from school. Plan Pakistan will be focusing thier campaign on eliminating corporal punishment in educational institutions across Pakistan
The event was started by the welcome note of Roger Braden, Acting Country Director of Plan Pakistan. He welcomed the distinguished guests and talked about the impact of corporal punishment on children in Pakistan. Quoting from a study conducted by Plan Pakistan In Punjab, He said, "the practice of corporal punishment is 89% in the areas researched and contrary to popular belief, it is practiced equally in both rural and urbansettings".
Ramrajya Joshi, the programme support manager of Plan Pakistan made a presentation on plan and its work in Pakistan. She commented that plan has been working iin Pakistan since 1997 and is currently sponseriing 25000 children in Pakistan. Plan covers the areas of health, education, livelihood, children and gender rights and disaster risk reduction.
Ms.Soofia Aziz, Country learning advisor Plan Pakistan made a presentation on "Implementation of Directives Banning Corporal punishment in all Educational Institutions of Pakistan". Pakistan has a number of issues that plague its educational institutions... we have problems like corporal punishmeant, bullying, sexual abuse / harassment etc..