Corporal punishment against children is a harmful approach violating the Convention On the Rights of the Child. So far, the belief that corporal punishment is good for educating and raising children still accounts for a very big part in daily life. The speech “to love a child is to beat him” is used to plead for the belief to educate the child. Media plays a very important role in propagating people to use alternative approaches rather than using corporal punishment in raising and educating children.
In 2004, we implemented the following activities:
1. Organizing a workshop inviting journalists, making influence on the journalists to propagate anti-corporal punishment against children. There were 25 journalists participating in the workshop, who were oriented about the contents loading information of corporal punishment and making notice of professional ethics if necessary.
2. Combining contents of anti-coporal punishment into 10 minute broadcasting progams on the radio voice of Vietnam (every Saturday morning). Helping listeners especially those who live in the rural areas and poor community to understand and accept the fact that corporal punishment is harmful to children.
3. Combining the messenges of anti-corporal punishment against children into the service of telephone automatic information lines controlled by CSAGA and local post-offices.
4. The issue of corporal punishment is also mentioned on Labor Newspaper and Family&Society Newspaper. There have been approximately 30 articles on this issue.
