All children deserve to live free from violence.
Children of all ages, genders, backgrounds, and nationalities experience many forms of violence, including physical, psychological, and sexual violence, torture, exploitation, and online violence. Violence can occur in homes and families, schools, institutions, workplaces, and communities. In many cases, perpetrators are those who are meant to protect children, including parents and caregivers, teachers, employers, police, and security forces.
DCI prioritises the prevention of and response to all forms of violence against children in all settings, with a particular focus on child justice and gender-based violence. DCI works to strengthen child protection systems, promote accountability, and ensure that children who experience violence have access to appropriate protection, support, and justice.
DCI’s long-term objectives are to defend children’s right to freedom from all forms of violence, help to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against children, and ensure survivors have access to justice, remedies, and recovery.
Our Work
Our Role
DCI has been active for more than forty years in efforts to eliminate violence against children. DCI was a major partner in the NGO collaboration for the preparation of the UN Study on Violence against Children in 2006 and its subsequent follow-up. DCI was a founding member and co-chair of the International NGO Council on Violence Against Children, which was published in 2016: “10 years on: Global progress and delay in ending violence against children– The rhetoric and the reality”.
DCI continues to prioritise the prevention of and responses to all forms of violence against children in all settings, particularly in the field of child justice and with a focus on gender-based violence. DCI is an active member of the Child Rights Connect Working Group on Children and Violence. This group aims to join efforts to advocate for the elimination of violence against children with the UN human rights mechanisms and bodies in Geneva and to follow up on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, especially Target 16.2 on ending abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence and torture against children, and Target 15.3 on eliminating all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation by 2030. DCI is also a member of the Global Partnership to End Violence against Children. DCI actively advocates for the universal implementation of the Second Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography of the UNCRC.
In addition, DCI’s National Sections regularly monitor vulnerable situations for children, which enables DCI to combat widespread abuses, such as child trafficking and gender-based violence. Our response is adapted to children’s needs, involving individual psychosocial counselling and education programmes.
International Level
DCI combats violence against children by promoting access to justice and effective remedies, advocating for legislative and policy reform, and implementing programmes that address systemic neglect, strengthen child protection systems, and promote child-centred justice.
To achieve concrete results in eliminating violence against children, DCI focuses on evidence-based advocacy through oral and written statements, capacity-building of civil society actors and reports to the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), and campaigns and calls-to-action directed at governments. In order to challenge social norms and empower children especially girls, DCI also takes a gender-based perspective in the implementation of innovative programmes like the She Leads.
National Level
DCI strives to prevent violence against children in all its forms. Our National Sections work to strengthen child safeguarding policies and practices across organisations, municipalities, communities, and sectors. Children are supported to access justice, support services, and effective remedies when their rights are at risk or violated.