Real Madrid supports the campaign launched by the Council of Europe for children’s rights, “Raise your hand against smacking”. Today, on the occasion of the opening of the “Sport and Education” Forum, organised by the Real Madrid Foundation at the Bernabéu Stadium, Emilio Butragueño, the football team’s director for institutional relations, will give the deputy secretary general of CoE, Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, the players’ signatures in support of the campaign.
As explained by the CoE, the campaign “aims at informing and raising awareness of children’s rights, promoting good parental skills, and above all abolishing the corporal punishment of children, the most widespread form of abuse, by amending the legislations”. The CoE thinks this practice is “ineffective as a disciplinary system”, the carrier “of wrong messages and a potential source of physical and mental damage”.
However to raise public awareness of this campaign, “significant endorsers are needed”. The initiative, launched in Zagreb on June 15th 2008, has been endorsed so far by 20 member states that have abolished corporal punishment while another 7 have pledged to do as much.
Info: http://www.coe.int/t/dg3/corporalpunishment/default_EN.asp