INSPIRE Handbook: Action for Implementing the Seven Strategies for Ending Violence Against Children

It is estimated that globally up to 1 billion children are subject to violence each year. Violence against children has strong, long-lasting effects on brain function, mental health, health risk behaviours, noncommunicable diseases, infectious diseases such as HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, and social functioning. The direct and indirect economic costs of these effects are substantial, and violence against children undermines the potential of both individuals and societies.

In 2016, 10 global agencies collaborated to produce INSPIRE: Seven strategies for ending violence against children, the first-ever global technical package for preventing and responding to violence against children. The INSPIRE package is anchored by the recognition in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) that all children have the right to be free from all forms of violence, and sets out evidence that clearly shows that preventing violence against children is critical to ensuring sound neurological development, enhancing early childhood development, interrupting the intergenerational cycle of violence, reducing crime, and laying the foundations for lifelong health, well-being and productivity.

The INSPIRE technical package reinforces the protections guaranteed in the CRC, which oblige States Parties to take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and education measures to prevent violence against children, and to protect them from violence while in the care of parents, legal guardians or other caregivers. Furthermore, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes Target 16.2 to end all forms of violence against children. Decision-makers and practitioners in social services, health, justice and education sectors have stepped up efforts to intensify evidence-based prevention and response strategies, governments and civil society organizations are increasingly committed to working together to achieve the target, and there is a growing public consensus that violence against children will no longer be tolerated.