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Children and adolescents under 18 years in Latin America and the Caribbean suffer daily physical and psychological abuse, and a high percentage of adults believe it is a normal practice of education and socialization.

This is apparent from surveys in 16 countries in the region, indicating that high percentages of adults in some cases above 80% - consider using natural child abuse, including corporal punishment to impose discipline.

The data are found in the article "Child abuse: a painful reality behind closed doors" Challenges Bulletin No. 9, ECLAC and UNICEF, which analyzes the progress of the millennium development goals in childhood and adolescence.

However, due to the lack of an approved methodology to measure the various forms of abuse can not be talking numbers comparable across countries. However, several national surveys indicate that child abuse is a rising phenomenon rarely reported.

Staggering
In Colombia, for example, 42% of women reported that their partners or husbands punished their sons and daughters with beatings, according to the National Survey of Demography and Health 2005.

In Uruguay, 82 percent of adults surveyed in a study by the Ministry of Social Development in 2008 reported some form of psychological or physical violence toward an infant at home.

And in Costa Rica, an investigation in 2004 of the Institute of Social Studies in Population found that 65.3 percent of adult physical violence against their children.

ABUSE TO PARENTS
The main risk factor for the existence of violence against children within families is that the parent has suffered a similar experience in his childhood, according to psychologist and sociologist Soledad Larraín Bascuñán Carolina, Unicef, study's authors. This is called the phenomenon of intergenerational transmission of violence.

Experts explain that violence is understood as the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, to cause or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.

Despite the efforts, the region has not yet developed an effective response to child abuse and one of the main difficulties is the absence of real information on their size and characteristics, especially when it occurs within the home, because the practice complaints are not widespread and when there are minimal sanctioned cases to justice.

To make progress in combating child abuse recommends giving priority to prevention and early intervention, with the participation of all institutions that have contact with minors.