The Beijing Platform for Action, adopted during the Fourth World Conference on Women (held in Beijing in 1995), listed "girl child" as one of its 12 critical areas of concern. The platform also set the elimination of violence against girls as a strategic objective. The vast majority of girls will grow up to be mothers; as such, girls, collectively, compose a group of people who require special care and love. Protecting girls' rights and interests is key to realizing the UN Millennium Development Goals, promoting economic growth and building a harmonious society.

Laws Help Protect Girls

The Chinese Government has long attached great importance to girls' survival, protection and development. For example, the government implemented both the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children. The National People's Congress, China's top legislature, adopted the Law on the Protection of Minors, the Law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Women, and the Law on Maternal and Infant Health Care, all of which contained special articles addressing the protection of girls' rights and interests. Programs issued by the State Council, the central government's cabinet, to foster the development of Chinese women and children have also addressed girls' protection and development.

Compared with boys, girls are more vulnerable, globally, to violence. Zhang Xuemei, executive director of Beijing Children's Legal Aid and Research Center, studied 429 cases that involved children who had been victims of domestic violence. Chinese media had reported on those cases between 2008 and June 2012. Zhang's findings indicated 53 percent – slightly higher than the percentage of boys – of girls had been victims of domestic violence.

In addition, the number of sexual assaults against girls has been on the rise in China in recent years. According to a report, issued jointly in 2012 by Guangdong Women's Federation and Guangdong Provincial People's Procuratorate, public-prosecution departments in South China's Guangdong Province handled 1,708 sexual assault cases, in which the victims were girls under the age of 18, between 2008 and June 2011.

To prevent sexual assaults against children, China's ministries of Education, Public Security and Justice jointly issued a notice in 2003, in an attempt to eliminate sexual assaults in kindergartens and primary and middle schools.

In 2006, the Ministry of Education and 10 government agencies jointly issued the Regulations on Campus Safety Management for Kindergartens and Primary and High Schools. The regulations required schools to establish safety-management systems to protect the personal safety of the children.

In October 2013, the Supreme People's Court and four government agencies jointly issued the Opinions on Punishment by Law for Sexual Assaults Against Juveniles (Opinions), which contained a definition of sexual assault on an underage girl. Furthermore, the Opinions call for more legal aid and compensation (from perpetrators) for underage victims.

Protecting Girls Program

On December 4, 2014, which was China's first-ever National Constitutional Day, the Protecting Girls program received the netizens' choice of the year award during an awards gala hosted by China Central Television (CCTV).

"As volunteers with the Protecting Girls program, they have organized courses on the prevention of sexual assaults against children, shared information about children's safety education, and promoted legislation for building a long, effective mechanism to protect children," the award committee noted.

The Protecting Girls program, under the Child Safety Fund of China Social Assistance Foundation, is a charitable initiative with the objectives of raising children's awareness of protection and protecting children from sexual assaults. The program was established by 100 female journalists, from across China, on International Children's Day (June 1) in 2013.

Sun Xuemei, a journalist with Beijing News, is one of the women who helped start the program. After media had reported (on May 8, 2013) that a primary school principal, in Wanning, in South China's Hainan Province, had been "having sex with pupils," several QQ and WeChat journalist groups (online community services provided by Tencent) were rife with discussions, says Sun.

All of the groups' members were outraged, and they believed they should take action, as soon as possible, to help protect girls. Sun says organizers decided to teach girls in remote areas how to prevent a sexual assault. Organizers then asked experts to develop teaching plans.

Fang Gang, director of the Institute of Sexuality and Gender Studies, at Beijing Forestry University, volunteered to oversee compilation of the teaching materials. Tang Yu, a female journalist with Labor Noon News, compiled most of the materials.

Tang and several female journalists also collected sex-assault-prevention tips from foreign websites, and then integrated the tips into the teaching plans. "We wanted to tell girls what they should do, and what they should not do," says Sun.

The first lecture was presented in a rural primary school in Yangbi Yi Autonomous County, in Southwest China's Yunnan Province.

Organizers of the program and representatives of k618.cn, a website sponsored by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC), hosted a seminar on protecting girls in March 2015, ahead of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the National People's Congress (NPC).

Child-safety experts, 75 journalists and representatives of 47 media organizations attended.

During the afternoon of July 24, 2014, an open class, organized by the Protecting Girls program, was held in Xinqiao Primary School, in Harbin, capital of Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. That class marked the program's official launch in the province. Teacher Wang Lidong talked to the children about "learning about the private parts of our bodies," "how to identify and prevent a sexual assault," and "what to do if facing a sexual assault."

To promote the healthy growth of girls, especially left-behind girls whose parents left their rural hometowns to work in cities, Heilongjiang Women's Federation worked with program organizers to organize Protecting Girls courses across the province. They also printed textbooks, trained teachers, helped raise girls' awareness about safety and established a network (composed of schools, families and society) for the protection of girls.

Heilongjiang Women's Federation also provided 10,000 copies of the sex-assault-prevention handbook for left-behind girls and 10,000 posters for all of the "women's homes" and "left-behind children's homes" in rural areas.

To date, the Protecting Girls program has held lectures in 20 provinces, distributed 120,000 sex-assault-prevention brochures and trained 1,000 volunteers. More than 100,000 students have benefited from the program.

Bud Protection Action

As the Protecting Girls program was being implemented, China's first charitable organization, the China Children and Teenagers' Foundation (CCTF), was doing its part to raise awareness about the protection of girls.

The foundation and Beijing Normal University issued a report on girls' protection on September 13, 2013.

Chen Xiaoxia, Secretary-General of CCTF, said research teams have been sent to Guangdong, Guizhou, Jilin and other provinces since March 2013. Those teams have conducted surveys. The report was compiled based on the surveys' results, and on the analyses of media reports. The authors of the report explored the reasons for and the current situation of girls being harmed, and they proposed measures to protect girls and/or help the victims recover from the assaults.

During the news conference to release the report, Zhao Donghua, Vice-President and Member of the Secretariat of the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF), and Vice-President of CCTF, said society must have a zero-tolerance policy against behavior that hurts children.

During that news conference, CCTF also announced the launch of the Spring Bud Project – Bud Protection Action, an initiative by ACWF to focus on girls' safety and protection. The initiative has two purposes: Strengthen awareness of precaution, by conducting publicity, education and training related to girls' safety and protection; provide training to parents, girls, community workers and teachers; and compile and distribute the parents' and children's handbooks. The second objective is to provide legal and psychological assistance to girls (and their families) who have been sexually assaulted, and to help victims recover from sexual assaults.

Song Xiuyan, Vice-President and First Member of the Secretariat of the ACWF, said preventing sexual assaults against women, especially against girls, will be one of the federation's priorities during the next 10 years.

(Source: Women of China English Monthly June 2015 Issue)