FIXING VIOLENCE IN OUR SOCIETY
by Louise van der Merwe
Editor | Animal Voice
Managing Trustee | The Humane Education Trust
Director | Nature-Based Education, Cape Town
Mobile | 082 457 9177
Email | education@naturebased.online | avoice@yebo.co.za
Website | www.animalvoice.org | www.naturebased.education
The grim reality that millions of South Africa’s children are exposed to violence every single day is deeply disheartening especially when we are now fully aware that witnessing violence harms the brain development of children.
The 2025 Child Gauge for South Africa, published by the Children’s Institute at the University of Cape Town in cooperation with UNICEF, rightly calls for an integrated approach to breaking cycles of violence. Integration is indeed the key. Yet at no point does the Gauge explicitly include the treatment of animals within communities, as part of that integrated strategy. Nor does it explicitly recognise that animal neglect and abuse is an early warning indicator of behaviour that will likely evolve, in adulthood, into domestic and child abuse.
The United Nations has acknowledged what psychological research consistently confirms: exposure to neglect or abuse of animals – the most vulnerable in our society – can erode the innate empathy with which children are born. When a child witnesses an animal being harmed, a process of desensitisation begins. Desensitisation leads to normalisation and ultimately to participation.
When introducing General Comment 26 to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on 18th in February 2023, UNCRC Vice-Chair Dr Rinchen Chophel underscored a critical truth: psychological studies demonstrate that witnessing or participating in violence – including violence towards animals – profoundly harms children’s moral and psychological development, conditioning long-term behavioural patterns. See HERE.
If we are serious about fixing violence in our society, we cannot afford to ignore The Link. See HERE.
An integrated approach must mean exactly that: integrating all the environments in which children live, learn, and absorb behavioural norms – including how adults treat the animals in our care.
To exclude animals from the violence conversation is an oversight.
An Action Year for a Kinder World!
Warm greetings to educators everywhere…
Nature-based Education is delighted to offer you an inspiring line-up of classroom activities to bring compassion, curiosity, and care for all living beings into your learners’ understanding of the world, throughout the year.
To launch this journey, we invite you, for a start, to enjoy the Five Freedoms for Animals Puppet Play. Watch below as it is performed by the learners of Forest Heights Primary School near Cape Town.
This joyful production introduces vital animal-welfare principles in a way that is engaging, age-appropriate for 10 to 12-year-olds, and deeply memorable for children.
You are warmly encouraged to download the script for the play here, so that your own learners can experience the fun of performing it themselves.
Many more fun activities will follow, so please keep an eye out. Together, these small lessons in kindness help build a more compassionate world.
In Celebration of International Day of Education - 24 January 2026
Here, Zimbabwe learners build empathy and kindness for each other, and animals too, through presenting the Five Freedoms Puppet Play. The Humane Education Trust thanks Susan Chenaux-Repond of the CARE organisation for making it happen!
Says Susan: “I have derived much inspiration from your Nature-Based Education online platform. We are a small team providing free veterinary treatment for the animals of the rural folk. The children in this photos are from Victoria Falls Primary School. They come to learn about our work as part of their career guidance programme. After listening to the talk by Dr Isaac Moyo, they will get ready to perform the Puppet Play."
To support CARE or to contact Susan Chenaux-Repond, please go to:
+263 (0) 77 889 3370 (WhatsApp)
Puppets ready for action!
Dr Isaac Moyo talks to the learners about being a vet
Your school too can perform the Five Freedoms puppet play
24 January 2026
Kind Attention:
Alysha Alva and Can Remzi Ergen
Hosts of UNICEF’s celebration of the International Day of Education
World’s Largest Online Lesson Plan
Cc:
Johannes Wedenig – UNICEF Representative, South Africa
Malcolm Plant – World Link Coalition
Dear Alysha and Can,
Thank you for inviting The Humane Education Trust to attend the World’s Largest Online
Lesson Plan in celebration of the International Day of Education. Your chosen theme –
“What does HOPE look like and what does HOPE feel like?” – was deeply compelling. I wasparticularly struck by the phrase in your video: “HOPE is a call to what is yet to be.”
Please accept our sincere congratulations on the success of the event. From 14-year-old Livvy in China, whose hope was to save Africa’s rhino from being hunted for its horn, to 13-year-old Abeera in India, whose hope was for leaders to halt “the bloodshed, violence, and industrialisation,” we witnessed raw and earnest HOPE expressed through the voices of
children who will inherit our beautiful and fragile planet.
Can’s reminder that HOPE is an action was especially meaningful. In that spirit, may we
respectfully suggest that the World’s Largest Lesson Plan for 2027 be centred on the recent
clarification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child through General Comment No. 26, paragraph 35.
GC26 paragraph 35 states that:
“Children must be protected from all forms of physical and psychological violence, whether
in their home or in society, and from exposure to violence, such as domestic violence or
violence inflicted on animals.”
As we understand it, UNICEF’s mandate is precisely to protect children from violence. We
now know that exposure to any form of violence erodes the innate empathy with which all
children are born. GC26 paragraph 35 explicitly seeks to safeguard that very empathy –
without which civilisation itself could not have evolved.
OPEN LETTER
Should this idea resonate with you, The Humane Education Trust would be honoured to
support such a lesson plan. We have a wide range of educational resources at your disposal,
all of which have been approved by the South African Department of Basic Education.
And perhaps, in the true spirit of hope-in-action, 12-year-old Bruce from North Wales and
13-year-old Thomi Fouskoudi from Greece might even put their heads together to invent an
app to track the global progress of GC26 paragraph 35 in action.
Thank you very much for considering this proposal.
With kind regards,
Louise van der Merwe
Editor | Animal Voice
Managing Trustee | The Humane Education Trust
Director | Nature-Based Education, Cape Town, South Africa
Mobile | 082 457 9177
Email | education@naturebased.online | avoice@yebo.co.za
Website | https://www.naturebased.education/ | https://www.animalvoice.org/