Table 3.

Defnitions of violence against children used in Pakistan literature

United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
Defnition of a child: Child is recognized as a person under 18, unless national laws recognize the age of majority earlier. Non-discrimination: All rights apply to all children without exception. It is the State's obligation to protect children from any form of discrimination and to take positive action to promote their rights. Best interests of the child: All actions concerning the child shall take full account of his or her best interests. The State shall provide the child with adequate care when parents, or others charged with that responsibility, fail to do so. Implementation of rights: The State must do all it can to implement the rights contained in the Convention. Parental guidance and the child's evolving capacities: The State must respect the rights and responsibilities of parents and the extended family to provide guidance for the child which is appropriate to her or his evolving capacities. Survival and development: Every child has the inherent right to life, and the State has an obligation to ensure the child's survival and development.
Organization/Article	Defnition
WHO World Report on Violence and Health 2002	“Child abuse or maltreatment constitutes all forms of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect or negligent treatment or commercial or other exploitation, resulting in actual or potential harm to the child's health, survival, development or dignity in the context of a relationship responsibility, trust of power”
UNICEF	“Mistreatment, taking advantage of someone, using someone selfshly. As in making a child work to pay off their parent's debts or making them do dangerous or illegal work in order to make someone else better off. Child pornography and child prostitution are both examples of comercial sexual exploitation”
Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child 2000, Pakistan	Violence against children encompasses all forms of physical and mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, harmful traditional practices, exploitation, bullying in schools, corporal punishment and sexual abuse. [Follow the Convention on the Rights of the Child]
Pakistan Pediatric Association Child Right's Group	There is no universal defnition of child abuse, and the concept varies from country to country and society to society. As a general guide, child abuse is defned as “any act of commission or omission that endangers or impairs a child's physical/psychological health and development. Such act is judged on the basis of a combination of community standards and professional expertise to be damaging. It is committed by individuals, singly or collectively, who by their characteristics (e.g. age, status, knowledge, organizational form) are in a position of differential power that renders a child vulnerable”
Mehnaz A et al. 2000	Defnition of violence in the context of law is ‘unlawful exercise of force’ and ‘intimidation by exhibition of force’
Aziz F 2002	“Child battering is not just physical abuse. It can be mental, emotional, sexual, moral and ethical abuse and perhaps in its most important and unrecognized subtle form, child neglect”
Gadit A 1998	Violence in terms of torture is defned as ‘deliberate, systematic infiction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons acting alone or on the orders of any authority, to force another person to yield information, to make a confession or for any other reason”

UNICEF=United Nations Children's Fund; WHO=World Health Organization