| Abstract: |
This paper presents a secondary analysis of supporting documents from the UN
Study on Violence against Children. The purpose of the analysis is to identify
sport-related material in the documents and gaps in research knowledge about
the role of sport in both preventing and facilitating violence against
children. This is a complementary document to the IRC study ‘Protecting
Children from Violence in Sport: A review with a focus on industrialized
countries’ (forthcoming in 2010), developed by the same research team. Content
analysis was undertaken on material archived for the UN Study, including
submissions by UN agencies and non-governmental organizations on research
relating to violence against children, and on the country surveys that had
been returned by governments as part of the UN Study consultation. A list of
search terms was established and each selected text or survey was searched
against them. On the basis of these analyses, several key conclusions emerged.
First, there is a marked absence of empirical data about the forms, prevalence
and incidence of violence to children in sport and about the best mechanisms
for preventing or resolving such problems. Second, there is a lack of
coordination between governments and sport NGOs on the subject of violence
against children in sport, and there appears to be no evidence of a functional
link between the agencies responsible for sport for development and those
responsible for prevention of violence to children. The findings point to the
need to do more, targeted research on violence against children in sport and
to assess the efficacy of sport as a tool of violence prevention. Since
countries approach the matter of violence to children in many different ways,
the establishment of international standards for safeguarding children and for
violence prevention in sport is recommended |