Change your facebook profile picture to a cartoon character from your childhood and invite your friends to do the same. Until monday (Dec. 6) there should be no human faces on facebook, but an invasion of memories.(FOR THE FIGHT AGAINST CHILD VIOLENCE!)
For a mother of four kids, it’s not hard for me to just change my profile picture, it says fight gainst child violence, so be it. But what does it really mean? To create awareness, I think. But where it begun? Who initiated it? And how can changing your profile picture to a cartoon character will help infight against child violence?
In my search for the culprit, I first look in the website of Unicef. I knew there was one last week,National Day of Prayer and Action for Children in Makati City.UNICEF joins religious leaders to launch global initiative to promote exclusive breastfeeding. Clearly it’s about breastfeeding and not fight against child violence (I will ask some people if Unicef initiated it). I can’t find a site that offers explanation on how changing the profile pic will help in fight against child violence.
When you say it is to create awareness, it is to make the knowledge be known to public. It is to make the public understand a certain issue and in this case, child violence. So how can this profile change campaign creates awareness? Is it the curiosity that arises from other users? But really how many users will take time to research or even read about Child Violence? Or is it a way to show you support the Fight Child Violence? But what is Child Violence all about? And after the given time frame? What happens? Will the number of child abuse cases be lessen?
This maybe another case of social networking hype, but it’s fun nonetheless.
On with the more serious topic:Child Violence.
Based onRepublic Act No. 9262 ,Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children, Act of 2004; “Children” refers to those below eighteen (18) years of age or older but are incapable of taking care of themselves as defined under Republic Act No. 7610. As used in this Act, it includes the biological children of the victim and other children under her care.
Violence is an act or a series of acts that result in or will most likely result in physical, sexual, psychological harm orsuffering. This harm includes (but notlimited) the following:
- Physical
- Sexual
- Psychological
- Economic Abuse
Physical violencecan be easily identify. It refers to acts that is done physically.Sexual violenceon the other hand refers to act that are sexual in nature. But how can one say that is sexual? Below are some acts that are considered as sexual abuse (again fromAnti-Violence Against Women and Their Children):
- Rape, sexual harassment, acts of lasciviousness, treating a woman or her child as a sex object, making demeaning and sexually suggestive remarks, physically attacking the sexual parts of the victim’s body, forcing her/him to watch obscene publications and indecent shows or forcing the woman or her child to do indecent acts and/or make films thereof, forcing the wife and mistress/lover to live in the conjugal home or sleep together in the same room with the abuser;
- acts causing or attempting to cause the victim to engage in any sexual activity by force, threat of force, physical or other harm or threat of physical or other harm or coercion;
- Prostituting the woman or child.
But the acts are not limited to the mentioned above.
Psychological violencerefer to acts that results to mental or emotional suffering.
There is no exact day for fight against Child Violence but November 19 is theInternational Day for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.
