Moldovan ministry, UNICEF organise anti-violence flash-mob in Chisinau

A group of 25 children, aged between 5 and 15, together with Labour, Social and Family Protection Minister Valentina Buliga and UNICEF representative in Moldova Alexandra Yuster, on June 4 gave to the passers-by paper-made angels in the memory of children who have suffered due to violence. The flash mob was carried out in the Chisinau-based Stefan cel Mare si Sfint public garden, on the occasion of the International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression annually marked on 4 June.

Buliga said that the blue-coloured angels with the message «No tolerance to violence against children!», was addressed to parents, grandparents, relatives, neighbours in order to urge them to find an alternative to physical aggression. «The beating is a crime against children. When somebody knows aggressed children, he has to inform the social assistant or the teachers,» Buliga said.

The head of department of the Labour, Social Protection and Family Protection Ministry, Viorica Dumbraveanu, stressed that instead of beating the child, the parent should discuss with him, to explain him via games certain situations. When a conflict situation with teenagers appears in a family, both the parent, as well as the child needs psychological assistance, Dumbraveanu said.

The UNICEF statistics show that, in Moldova, 16 per cent of the children aged less than 1 are beaten by their parents. Each second child, aged between 1 and 7, has experimented a domestic violence situation. At the same time, only 8 per cent of parents consider that a person should be reported to the police for beating her child. In early 2013, a 5-year-od girl from Leova district died after she was beaten by her father.

Adapted from Moldpres