What will Labour do about this deadly epidemic?

There’s an epidemic sweeping the world. It destroys families, snuffs out hope and opportunity and hurts those who least deserve a painful death. I’m not talking about Ebola (though that’s an unspeakably horrifying plague), nor am I talking about Malaria or TB (both of which cause a death toll that dwarves Ebola every single year).

I’m talking about something that kills every five minutes.

Violence against children.

Unicef UK have a new report out today (“Children in Danger”) that highlights the scale of the problem. It’s truly one of the most eye-opening and troubling reports I’ve ever read. But this is an issue that is often overlooked, brushed under the carpet – or to which we are willfully blind.

Because when people reel off shocking stats about children around the world dying violent deaths, it’s all too easy to conjure up an appropriate image. Of child soldiers in Seirra Leone perhaps. Or the innocent child victims of Syria. Yet the truth is more complex and more painfully difficult to comprehend.

The vast majority of children who dies as a result of violence (over 75%) are killed outside warzones. They are dying in their homes, their schools and their communities.

And for those who’d like to complacently think that this is a problem for the “third world – the countries with the highest rates of child murders are El Salvador, Guatemala, Venezuela, Haiti, and Lesotho” – the situation is far more complex than that. Those living in poverty are more likely to be victims of violence (wherever they live in the world) – and more then 17,000 children were taken into care in the UK last year after suffering abuse or neglect.

Labour peer Doreen Lawrence has written the foreword to the report, and says:

“This epidemic of violence against children feeds off silence. It grows when we soundlessly accept that this is just the way things are. Every five minutes, somewhere across the globe, a family loses a son or daughter to violence. This is intolerable – it must stop.”

So how can Labour act to change this? Tackling poverty at a domestic level is perhaps one of the best ways to begin (as Labour policymakers have known for some time). That’s why eliminating child poverty by 2020 has long been an aim of the British government, although with 3.5 million children in the UK living in poverty today according to the Child Poverty Action Group (that’s over 1 in 4 children) that goal looks unlikely to be achieved. That it could be missed so dramatically and substantially is depressing.

But could greater progress be made on an international level. Governments are currently negotiating a new set of global development targets, replacing the Millennium Development Goals which expire in 2015. Unicef’s report calls for concerted action to make ending violence against children a global priority – or risk seeing global gains made in health and education recede.

Labour should set their stall out clearly and openly ahead of the next election, and commit to standing up for the worldwide child victims of violence – ending abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence and torture against children by 2030. In the face of such overwhelming evidence – and terrifying statistics – that seems like a no-brainer for a future party of government.

Especially one that wishes to lead compassionately on the international stage.