These are children's lives at stake.
Violation of children's rights happens across the globe, despite class, race, gender, and any other defining characteristic. What they suffer through can dramatically alter their lives for the worse. It is important to remember that the aftershocks can be as bad as living through the moment, and in some of the stories below you can read about 3 different occurrences.
Read about real stories:
The graph on the left illustrates the correlation between child abuse (sexual, physical, and neglect) and employment. As you can see, the rates of unemployment are higher across the board for any degree of maltreatment.
(Purdue University)
It's affecting you, too.
if you lack sympathy, at least care about yourself
As seen in this graph, the rate of maltreatment is higher in low-income households. Victims of childhood maltreatment are more than 2x as likely to fall below the federal poverty line than those who are not.
When taking both graphs into consideration you start to realize it is a never-ending cycle- poorer families are more likely to abuse their kids, and those kids will be less likely to be employed. When they grow, they'll be more likely to abuse, and it goes on and on.
This is why it is crucial to defend children's rights. In these cases of abuse, getting the child out of the household and into a safe, loving environment not only benefits the child but their future opportunities as well.
Communities feel the effect
An estimate of $24 billion dollars per year is spent in dealing with repercussions of abuse and neglect.
These costs include
-
impaired physical and mental health
-
Substance abuse
-
criminal charges and imprisonment
-
teen pregnancies
-
Hospitalization
-
Mental health care
-
Child welfare services
-
law and legal service related abuse
(all more likely with violation of children's rights present)
Compared to those who aren't mistreated, victims are more likely to complete less schooling, be victimized again as adults, and have physical AND mental health problems interfere with their occupations. If the members of a community cannot function to their full potential, the community and the others living in it will suffer too.
What can they do?
To avoid dangerous cycles like the one mentioned above, it is important for communities to intervene and support their citizens. By providing adequate mental and physical care/support, the cycle could be broken, improving quality of life for the victims who have and are suffering and their communities.
*all stats from a study done by Purdue University*