VietNamNet Bridge – The violence of child abuse is a growing, experts have warned, which has been blamed on the restrictions in the execution of legal documents.

More child abuse cases found

According to the National Assembly’s Committee for Culture, Education, the Youth and Children, the child abuse not only occurs in the community, at works, but also at families and schools. The violators are diversified, from teachers, friends, to neighbors, strangers, or even foreigners.

The number of sexual abuse, exploitation of child labor and school violence cases has increased rapidly.

A report by the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs showed that in 2007, 1001 children bore violence and abuse, while the figure rose 10 1613 in 2008 and 1805 in 2009. In 2010, 1245 children were reportedly abused, but this was just the figure from 46 out of the 63 provinces.

Meanwhile, the reports from local education and training departments showed that since the beginning of the 2009-2010 academic year, they discovered 1598 cases in which students fought each other. Especially, many cases were so serious that they caused injuries and death to the victims,

In the 2010-2011 academic year alone, four students fought each other, which lead to the death tools. On average, one fighting case occurred in every 5260 students, one student in every 5555 students got disciplinary warning, and one in every 11,111 students were forced to stay off from school because of their behavior of fighting friends.

Meanwhile, according to UNICEF in Vietnam, if counting on other vulnerable children, such as trafficked, exploited, and the children from poor families, the total number of children that need support may reach 4.3 million, or 18 percent of the total children nationwide.

According to Nguyen Van Tuyet, a standing member of the National Assembly’s Committee for Culture, Education, the Youth and Children, said that in most of the cases, the victims were not discovered by the community, or the victims did not report their problems to the local authorities. Most of them were discovered and denounced to the police by mass media.

Tuyet went on to say that the number of child abuse cases is just the tip of the iceberg, because only the children, who bore physical exploitation, were reported. Meanwhile, there has been no accurate figure about the number of children who bore mental abuse.

Not lacking laws, lacking strict implementation of the laws

Dr Pham Hanh Sam from the Central Women’s Union has pointed out that the large urbanization, the import of many cultural tendencies, plus the morality degrading of the social and school environment all have led to the increasing high number of child abuse. Meanwhile, a lot of parents still lack knowledge about the laws, and lack the skills to protect, take care and educate children.

However, Sam believes that the main reason behind this is the loosening of the loosening in the law implementation.

Sharing the same view, Phan Thanh Minh, former Head of the Children Protection Division of the HCM City Department for Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs in HCM City, said that Vietnam does not lack relating laws, but it lacks the strict implementation of the laws.

Minh said that the Decree 91 clearly stipulates the punishment levels on the violators, but it is not easy to make punishment, because local authorities may cover up the violators in order to protect their high achievements.

According to the Ministry of Public Security, in 2011, 1548 cases of child abuse were discovered, up by 25 cases over 2010. Especially, the number of child sexual abuse cases accounted for 60 percent of the total cases of child abuse.

Source: SGTT