Today the Swedish Ambassador to Tanzania, Mr Staffan Herrström, gives a public talk in a seminar on Zanzibar arranged by Zanzibar Ministry of Education and Vocational Training and Save the Children. The theme of the seminar is “Alternative Forms of Discipline, the Swedish Experience”.
- I am happy to share some Swedish experiences on the topic of corporal punishment of children. I am doing this knowing conditions are different in different parts of the world. But I am certainly doing this based on a firm conviction that violence against children is wrong in all cultures and all contexts all over the world. It is also ineffective as well as bad for development of a modern, democratic society and a modern, dynamic economy, says Staffan Herrström, Ambassador of Sweden to Tanzania.
- Abolishing corporal punishment should be recognised as a question of quality of education. You can not develop the inherent capacity of children by scaring them to listen, and you just can’t cane children to creativity. And linking to the UN convention on Rights of the Child, abolishing corporal punishment is also about children’s’ rights, says Ambassador Herrström,.
- In Sweden the arguments when going about the abolishing of corporal punishment – implemented in all school levels 1958 - was very much educational ones. A modern school should be based on interaction, care and mutual respect. Care and cane were simply incompatible, says Ambassador Herrström.
- Today the change in behaviour and tolerance in Sweden is remarkable with only around 10 percent thinking physical punishment for children is right. Have this lead to parents in Sweden abdicating from their parental duties? No, the parents exercise discipline and control by other means, by verbal rather than physical methods, says Ambassador Herrström.
- This seminar today suggests that Zanzibar could very well be in the forefront in the process towards abolishing corporate punishment. I would in this context also like to encourage Zanzibar to approve and implement a Law of the Child Act that would put the issue of banning corporal punishment in schools into a broader context of strengthening children’s rights, concludes Swedish Ambassador Staffan Herrström.
> Read the full speech