Child rights in Sri Lanka: Legal framework

Since time immemorial, Sri Lanka has had an advanced value system and an amoral society. However, the well-being of children today has become a severe problem for parents and society during the moral decline caused by invasive foreign forces and other factors. In such a social context, child abuse, although a threat that has spread secretly for centuries, has been recognised as a serious social problem and has focused attention on combating it in recent decades. By the mid-80s, child corporal punishment was recognised as a crime in Sri Lanka, and child sexual abuse was recognised as a severe crime in the early 1990s. Since then, Sri Lanka has joined forces with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to address the short-term and long-term effects of child abuse and to take action against various forms of violence and cruelty to children. This article aims to illustrate the legal framework for the protection of children from disasters.