Children

During the many years I served as the principal of a primary and secondary school, teachers would bring boys and girls who were clearly heavily under the influence of Tik to my office. I could sense that my advice and support did not help much. It was traumatic to witness the physical deterioration and loss of personal pride in children who used to be bright and upright youngsters. Even those who made it, still suffer psychological and spiritual scars.

It is hard enough for girls and women to deal with harassment and abuse in our every day physical spaces – of work, school, home - but what about when it happens in virtual spaces? How do we control what happens in cyberspace? Girls’Net recognises these challenges and has launched the "Keep your chats exactly that!" campaign to address violence against girls in online spaces.

We can listen to parties that tell us they will look after the police, give them resources, have more of them etc to help reduce crime, but if we do not look at key issues around violence and crime from the perspective of children and integrate children into every major strategy to address this issue, we are simply wasting our time.