Ending corporal punishment of children
What is corporal punishment?
Corporal punishment – defined as “any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort, however light” - is highly prevalent worldwide. At least half of all children are victims of violent punishment.
Such punishment most often involves hitting children with a hand or an object (such as a belt or shoe), but can also include kicking, shaking or throwing children; pinching, biting, pulling hair or boxing ears; burning and scalding; or forced ingestion (for example, washing children’s mouths out with soap). Corporal punishment often happens alongside psychological punishment, which involves behaviour that belittles, humiliates, denigrates, scapegoats, threatens, scares or ridicules a child.
Children are affected in their homes, schools, and other settings central to their lives. Corporal punishment cuts across geographical, cultural and economic boundaries and is recognized globally as the most common type of violence against children.
How many children are affected?
- Globally, an estimated 1.2 billion children aged 0-18 years are subjected to corporal punishment in their homes each year.
- Across 58 countries where data was available, 17% of all children were subjected to severe forms of corporal punishment – such as being hit on the head, face or ears, or hit hard and repeatedly – in the past month.
- National rates of corporal punishment in the home varies. Data from eight low- and middle-income countries showed that the prevalence of parent and caregiver self-reported corporal punishment of children aged 2-14 years ranged from lows of 30% in Kazakhstan and 32% in Ukraine, through 63% in Serbia and up to 77% and 64% in Togo and Sierra Leone respectively.
- Across all regions, corporal punishment was reported to be common in school - at both primary- and high-school levels. In Africa and Central America, 70% of children experience school corporal punishment in their lifetime. Lower rates were found in the Western Pacific region, with lifetime prevalence around 25%.
The case for change
For generations, adults have used various methods to discipline children, often including physically violent punishment. The common acceptance of corporal punishment and its legitimacy has been embedded in law, religion and cultural traditions in many societies.
But there is now overwhelming scientific evidence that corporal punishment of children carries multiple risks of harm and has no benefits for children, parents or societies. Negative outcomes include direct physical harm and death, mental health impacts, impaired cognitive and socio-emotional development, atypical brain development, increased aggression in children, greater acceptance and perpetration of violence in adulthood, and long-term negative impacts on physical health. Adults who consider corporal punishment a form of discipline are often unaware of its many potential long-lasting harms, and that positive, non-violent discipline can be used to better effect.
The WHO-led INSPIRE technical package presents several effective and promising interventions to end corporal punishment of children, including enactment and implementation of laws to prohibit physical punishment, programmes to transform harmful social norms around child-rearing and child discipline, supporting parents to develop nurturing, non-violent parenting, interventions to build non-violent schools, and early recognition response services to help reduce recurrence of violent punishment.
To date [April 2025], 68 States worldwide have fully prohibited all corporal punishment of children, with additional member states in the process of legislating against corporal punishment, to afford children the same protection from assault as adults.