Stern action required against corporal punishment

Yet another incident of brutal use of corporal punishment in a school was reported last week where a principal had brutally assaulted a student with a broomstick in the Kotagala area in Nuwara Eliya. The principal had assaulted a Grade 10 female student over the failure to provide money for a school function. The principal has since been transferred but no legal action taken despite the physical harm caused to a child who had to be hospitalised.

Despite corporal punishment being banned by the Ministry of Education, it is happening in schools while the authorities are turning a blind eye deliberately or not. The situation related to corporal punishment in Sri Lanka is still bleak with most of the cases of physical harm to correct children going unreported mainly due to the repercussions that will be faced by the victims afterward.

Even though Sri Lanka has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1991, the country is yet to act strongly against CP to prevent harming its children. The UN Committee that monitors the implementation of the CRC, in its General Comment No. 8, adopted in 2008 defines ‘corporal’ or ‘physical’ punishment as ‘any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort, however light’. The CRC Committee in 2018 recommended that Sri Lanka take urgent measures in areas of violence to children, including corporal punishment. The Committee expressed deep concern over high numbers of children subjected to abuse and violence, which remains legal in the home, alternative care settings, penal institutions, as well as in schools – and called on the Government to unequivocally prohibit corporal punishment, however light, in all settings, by law and without any further delay.

In February 2021, the Supreme Court condemned the use of corporal punishment of children in schools. The case was brought before the Supreme Court by a 15-year-old student and his parents against teachers and authorities of a public school. The student had been slapped across the face by one of the teachers which resulted in a permanent hearing impairment. The Court found that the use of corporal punishment by the teacher violated the Constitution noting that “While Corporal Punishment does not amount to torture in itself in the instant case, the practice of infliction of physical or mental punishment which disregards the inherent dignity of a child amounts to inhuman or degrading punishment.” It ordered compensation to be paid to the student by the teacher and the State respectively.

In some sections of society there is still a glorification of corporal punishment with a misguided view that such punishment is a corrective measure. There is ample evidence to prove that corporal punishment causes long-term damages in children’s lives. The effects of many types of violence can be life-long, and can even be passed from generation to generation. Evidence shows how violent discipline is associated with – among other negative outcomes – poor mental and physical health later in life, increased violence and aggression, and damage to family relationships.

It is time for Sri Lanka to join the march towards progress and create the space for children to grow up without fear and to understand that justice does not need to be achieved with violence. Corporal punishment creates a cycle of violence that is not only harmful to the individual but the greater society.