Almost a third of young teenagers – some 130 million children – around the world have recently experienced bullying at school, according to a UN report.
The report, released last week by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, found that 32 per cent of students say they have been bullied by peers at school on one or more days in the past month with the highest rates in the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa and the lowest in Central America, the Caribbean and Europe.
UNESCO report cover.
Boys are slightly more likely to be affected than girls, according the report, with 32 per cent of boys saying they experience bullying and 28 per cent of girls.
Speaking at an event at UN headquarters in New York City earlier this week, Marta Santos Pais, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ special representative on violence against children, said that being protected from bullying is “a fundamental human right”.
Pointing to role domestic violence can play in normalising such behaviour, Santos Pais cited statistics showing that 176 million children aged under five witnessed domestic violence on a regular basis and that children who bully others are twice as likely to have been exposed to domestic violence than other children.
“Exposure to toxic stress, domestic violence and a violent family environment has an irreversible impact on the development of very young children,” she said, adding that it “contributes to normalise the use of violence”.
Santos Pais also highlighted the role teachers can play in promoting “a culture of respect and safety” in schools.
Meanwhile, the UNESCO report also found that while the prevalence of cyberbullying is low compared to other forms of school bullying, it is an “increasing problem”.
It said that data from seven European countries – Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Romania, United Kingdom – showed the proportion of children aged between 11 and 16-years-old who used the internet and reported they had experienced cyber bullying had increased from seven per cent in 2010 to 12 per cent in 2014.
