Protecting Children From Violence In The Time Of Covid 19

Violence is an all-too-real part of life for children around the globe – regardless of their economic circumstances and sociocultural background – with both immediate and long-term consequences. Available data indicate that children’s experience of violence is widespread, taking different forms: About half the world’s children are subjected to corporal punishment at home; roughly 3 in 4 children between the ages of 2 and 4 years receive violent discipline by parents and other primary caregivers; half of students aged 13 to 15 experience peer violence in and around school; and 1 in 3 adolescent girls aged 15 to 19 have been victims of intimate partner violence. As daily lives and communities are upended by COVID-19, concern is mounting that violence against children may increase. Children with a history of abuse may find themselves even more vulnerable, both at home and online, and may experience more frequent and severe acts of violence. Others may be victimized for the first time. Children’s exposure to increased protection risks as a result of the coronavirus crisis may occur through a number of pathways. The pandemic could result in loss of parental care due to death, illness or separation, thereby placing children at heightened risk for violence, neglect and exploitation.

Captures the unique moment in time created by the Covid-19 pandemic and uses this as a lens to explore contemporary issues for social work education and practice. The 2020 coronavirus pandemic provided an unprecedented moment of global crisis, which placed health and social care at the forefront of the national agenda. The lockdown, social distancing measures and rapid move to online working created multiple challenges and safeguarding concerns for social work education and practice, whilst the unparalleled death rate exacerbated pre-existing problems with communicating openly about death and bereavement. Many of these issues were already at the surface of social work practice and education and this book examines how the health crisis has exposed these, whilst acting as a potential catalyst for change. This book acts as a testament to the historical moment whilst providing a forum for drawing together discussion from contemporary educators, practitioners and users of social work services.

This collection brings together a diverse group of scholars from throughout the world who have grappled with and investigated the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the lives of young children. Profound changes have occurred in all facets of early childhood education and care (ECEC). Young children and their families, college students enrolled in teacher preparation programs, inservice teachers/caregivers, and postsecondary faculty have endured prolonged periods of quarantine, disruption, stress, and grief precipitated by the pandemic. These consequences have been even more challenging for individuals and groups who were already struggling or marginalized prior to the advent of the coronavirus. Collectively, the chapter authors draw upon findings from their research and insights gleaned from professional experiences to recommend ways of providing high-quality programs despite persistent global health threats.​

This book provides a focused and comprehensive overview of the status of children across society, with special reference to emerging features and measures of child safety, welfare, and overall well-being. The book is arranged into four parts covering various dimensions of child welfare and well-being. In this second edition, highly experienced academics, researchers, child rights activities, and policymakers from both developed and developing countries have contributed chapters on topics such as status of children living under institutional care, sexual abuse of male children and tribal girl children, issues and challenges faced by children living in conflict zones, children living on the streets, COVID-19 and its impact on the education of children. The status of marginalized children gets special importance in the second edition. The new chapters include field-based experiences of researchers in protecting child rights and preventing child abuse. It also considers the promising strategies and promising future directions in enhancing effective prevention, intervention and responses to child abuse and neglect. This volume is essential for a wide range of professionals and researchers from the social sciences, law, medicine, and behavioral sciences. It is also beneficial for policymakers and law enforcement agencies working with children.

Establishing the means to improve performance in healthy, clinical, and military populations has long been a focus of study in the psychological and brain sciences. However, a major obstacle to this goal is generating individualized performance phenotypes that allow for the design of interventions that are tailored to the specific needs of the individual. Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) have qualified for the development of precision approaches that consider individual differences, allowing, for example, the establishment of individualized training, preparation, and recuperation programs optimal for an individual’s cognitive and biological phenotype. Corollary developments in AI have proven that combining domain expertise and stakeholder insights can considerably improve AI’s quality, performance, and dependability in the psychology and brain sciences. Recent Developments in Machine and Human Intelligence studies original empirical work, literature reviews, and methodological papers that establish and validate precision AI methods for human performance optimization with a focus on modeling individual differences via state-of-the-art computational methods and investigating how domain expertise and human judgment can improve the performance of AI methods. The topics are crafted in such a way as to cover all the areas of artificial and human intelligence that require AI for further development. This book contains algorithms and techniques that are explained with the help of developed source code and encompasses the readiness and needs for advancements in managing yet another pandemic in the future. It is designed for academicians, scientists, research scholars, professors, graduates, undergraduates, and students.

This book showcases the quality work that Latin American researchers have done on transition to school in Latin American countries by offering the English-speaking world, first-hand access to some Latin American transitions research, practices, and policies. This book shows the work carried out in countries such as Brazil, Chile, Cuba, and Mexico with regards to the way in which the transition to primary school is experienced from different stakeholders' perspectives, and how Latin American educational policies and cultural practices shape such an important process for stakeholders. This book was importantly framed by the COVID-19 pandemic which placed the world in a global health emergency, and it is our hope that this book will trigger future international collaborations between researchers, policy makers, and practitioners interested in transitions which could help produce a wealth of empirical evidence to inform educational policies and transitions practices across the world. Building networks where diverse experiences are valued and respected, as well as analysed, can help provide a platform that supports educators and researchers as they continue their work and branch out in new and challenging directions.

In 2020, the African Human Rights Law Journal (AHRLJ or Journal) celebrates 20 years since it first was published. The AHRLJ is the only peer-reviewed journal focused on human rights-related topics of relevance to Africa, Africans and scholars of Africa. It is a time for celebration. Since 2001, two issues of the AHRLJ have appeared every year. Initially published by Juta, in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2013 it became as an open-access journal published by the Pretoria University Law Press (PULP). PULP is a non-profit open-access publisher focused on advancing African scholarship. The AHRLJ contains peer-reviewed articles and ‘recent developments’, discussing the latest court decisions and legal developments in the African Union (AU) and regional economic communities. It contains brief discussions of recently-published books. With a total of 517 contributions in 40 issues (436 articles and 81 ‘recent developments’; not counting ‘book reviews’), on average the AHRLJ contains around 13 contributions per issue. The AHRLJ is accredited with the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS) and the South African Department of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, and appears in a number of open access portals, including AfricanLii, the Directory of Open Access Journals and SciELO. Over the 20 years of its existence, many significant articles appeared in the AHRLJ. According to Google Scholar the mostcited articles that have appeared in the Journal over this period are (i) T Metz ‘Ubuntu as a moral theory and human rights in South Africa’ (2011) 11 African Human Rights Law Journal 532-559 (with 273 citations); (ii) D Cornell and K van Marle ‘Exploring ubuntu: Tentative reflections’ (2005) 5 African Human Rights Law Journal 195- 220 (with 97 citations); (iii) S Tamale ‘Exploring the contours of African sexualities: Religion, law and power’ (2014) 14 African Human Rights Law Journal 150-177 (with 85 citations); K Kindiki ‘The normative and institutional framework of the African Union relating to the protection of human rights and the maintenance of international peace and security: A critical appraisal’ (2003) 3 African Human Rights Law Journal 97-117 (with 59 citations); and T Kaime ‘The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the cultural legitimacy of children’s rights in Africa: Some reflections’ (2005) 5 African Human Rights Law Journal 221-238) (with 54 citations). This occasion allows some perspective on the role that the Journal has played over the past 20 years. It is fair to say that the AHRLJ contributed towards strengthening indigenous African scholarship, in general, and human rights-related themes, specifically. Before the Journal there was no academic ‘outlet’ devoted to human rights in the broader African context. Both in quantity and in quality the Journal has left its mark on the landscape of scholarly journals. The AHRLJ has provided a forum for African voices, including those that needed to be ‘fine-tuned’. Different from many other peerreviewed journals, the AHRLJ has seen it as its responsibility to nurture emerging but not yet fully-flourishing talent. This approach allowed younger and emerging scholars to be guided to sharpen their skills and find their scholarly voices. The AHRLJ has evolved in tandem with the African regional human rights system, in a dialogic relationship characterised by constructive criticism. When the Journal was first published in 2001, the Protocol on the Establishment of an African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Court Protocol) was not yet in force. Over the years the Journal tracked the evolution of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Court) from a faltering start, through a phase when it increasingly expressed itself in an emerging jurisprudence, to the current situation of push-back by states signalled by the withdrawal by four states of their acceptance of the Court’s direct individual access jurisdiction. The same is largely true for the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (African Children’s Committee). It was in 2001 that the AU elected the first members of this Committee. It first met in 2002, and its first decade or so was lackluster. The Committee examined its first state report only in November 2008, and decided its first communication in March 2011. Articles by authors such as Mezmur and Sloth-Nielsen, who also served as members of the Committee, and Lloyd, placed the spotlight on the work of the Committee. Initially, these articles primarily served to describe and provide information that otherwise was largely inaccessible, but over time they increasingly provided a critical gaze and contributed to the constructive evolution of the Committee’s exercise of its mandate. By 2011 the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Commission) was already quite well established, but it also underwent significant growth over the subsequent 20-year period. Numerous articles in the Journal trace and analyse aspects of this evolution. Contributions in the Journal also cover most of the AU human rights treaties and soft law standards. A number of issues contain a ‘special focus’ section dealing with a thematic issue of particular relevance or concern, such as the focus on the Protocol to the African Charter on the Rights of Women (2006 no 1); ‘30 years of the African Charter’ (2011 no 2); and ‘sexual and reproductive rights and the African Women’s Protocol’ (2014 no 2). The scope of the Journal extends beyond the supranational dimension of human rights. Over the years many contributions explored aspects of the domestic human rights situation in countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. From time to time the specific focus sections also veered towards domestic human rights protection. See for instance the focus on 20 years of the South African Constitution (2014 no 2); on ‘adolescent sexual and reproductive rights in the African region’ (2017 no 2); on ‘the rule of law in sub-Saharan Africa’ (2018 no 1); and on ‘dignity taking and dignity restorations’ (2018 no 2).