Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Sustainable Development Goal 5 addresses violence against children.

Poverty

While poverty itself is not a direct cause of violence, extreme poverty can contribute to human rights violations. Poverty can create stresses on families, caregivers and communities that exacerbate the risk of violence, abuse and exploitation of children, such as child and forced marriage, child labor, trafficking, smuggling and recruitment into criminal gangs. Children whose basic needs are not being met are often left vulnerable t o the perpetrators of violence.

Gender equality and discrimination

Gender inequalities and discrimination increase the risk of violence, putting girls and women at particular risk and inhibiting their ability to seek protection. Social and cultural norms and practices that condone violence11 and the unequal treatment of girls limit their access to education. This reduces their choices and opportunities in life and, therefore, drives cycles of poverty and deprivation.

Peaceful, inclusive and just societies

The risks of violence against children are heightened by poverty and inequality, forced displacement, ongoing humanitarian crises, conflicts and violence, and the impact of the climate crisis, which can expose them to forms of violence such as trafficking and deprivation of liberty in the context of detention related to migration and peaceful protest. These risk factors even normalize violence against children. Organized criminal activity, underpinned by evolving technologies such as the darknet, encryption and the use of cryptocurrencies, make the detection of crime and the pursuit of justice even harder.

Achieving justice for children means ensuring that penal, civil and administrative justice systems are child-friendly and that they prioritize children’s well-being. At the same time, justice for children also encompasses the broader concepts of social and environmental justice as an integral part of promoting peaceful and inclusive societies.

Child-friendly justice systems guarantee the right to a remedy for child victims, are accountable to children, use the deprivation of liberty of children in conflict with the law as a measure of last resort, and prioritize restorative justice approaches.

Social justice must be afforded to all children. This also includes migrant and stateless children who often live in inadequate living conditions and lack access to essential services such as education, health and justice.