Depression and drugs are the consequences Three out of five children experience violence at home

Beating children, bullying classmates, sexually exploiting teenagers: One billion minors experience violence every year, according to the WHO. Now countries want to do something about it.

According to the United Nations, hundreds of millions of children and young people worldwide experience violence in their everyday lives. This includes beatings in the family, bullying at school, physical or emotional abuse and sexual violence. This can have lifelong consequences, warns the World Health Organization (WHO).

In most cases, the violence takes place behind closed doors. According to the WHO, more than half of 2 to 17-year-olds, a total of more than one billion minors, experience violence every year. Three out of five children and young people experience physical violence at home, and one in five girls and one in seven boys experience sexual violence. A quarter to half of minors are reportedly affected by bullying.

Depression and drug use are the consequences

According to estimates, only half of the children talk about their experiences of violence and less than ten percent receive help. Lifelong consequences could include depression and anxiety or tobacco and drug use. As a result, many children do not reach their learning potential at school, the report continued.

"Although violence is preventable, it remains a terrible daily reality for millions of children around the world, leaving scars that last for generations," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

At the first UN conference on violence against children in Bogota, Colombia, more than 100 countries have now promised to do something. Among other things, they want to provide better support for overburdened parents, set up school programs against bullying and for healthy social behavior or raise the age of marriage. Some countries want to ban children from being beaten at school or at home.

dpa