Comparing International Approaches to Safeguarding Children: Global Lesson Learning

Child maltreatment is a complex global problem which remains difficult to study and address. Over the last decade, we have seen considerable interest by governments globally in learning the lessons from different countries and comparing experiences as systems are adapted and refined. International
organisations such as the World Health Organization and UNICEF are increasingly prioritising activities to protect children from harm, with important reports on violence against children and strategies for preventing
child maltreatment (UNICEF, 2014; World Health Organization, 2002, 2006).
In turn, we have begun to see a growing body of literature that has started to provide data and insight into areas such as prevalence rates and developing
models of safeguarding as they emerge across an expanding range of countries (e.g. Fang et al., 2015; Hutchinson et al., 2015; Leung et al., 2008; Schmid and
Patel, 2016; Sidebotham, 2016).