Drawing on the ISPCAN Congress 2026, Deep Purkayastha, Director of Praajak, India, reflects on why preventing violence against children requires challenging harmful gender norms, strengthening institutional accountability and involving children in shaping their own protection.
A boy may know that sexual abuse is wrong but fear being ridiculed if he speaks about it. A girl may feel confident on the sports field but hesitate to question her coach. A child may recognise inappropriate behaviour but have no trusted adult to turn to. These situations reveal a limitation in how we approach child protection. We teach children to recognise abuse, understand consent and report concerns. But their ability to act on this knowledge depends on whether adults, institutions and communities are prepared to listen and respond.
This was one of my strongest reflections from the ISPCAN International Congress 2026, held in Melbourne from 24–27 August. Discussions explored how child protection systems can move from responding to abuse towards preventing it. For us at Praajak, a member of Family for Every Child, these discussions connected closely with our work on gender, sexual violence, adolescent participation, family strengthening and sports-based empowerment. They also raised questions about how we could connect these areas more deliberately.
Preventing sexual violence against boys requires challenging masculinity
Boys are often expected to be strong, independent and capable of protecting themselves. Showing fear or vulnerability may be discouraged or ridiculed, making it difficult to disclose sexual abuse or seek support. At the Congress, I contributed an oral presentation alongside Kriti Bhattarai from Voice of Children, Nepal, bringing South Asian perspectives into discussions on childhood sexual violence.
One particularly relevant keynote was Emma Håkansson's Teaching Children Autonomy and Obedience as Risk Factors for Sexual Abuse, which explored how expectations of obedience can affect children's vulnerability to abuse. This raises a contradiction. We teach children about bodily autonomy and consent while expecting them to obey adults, tolerate unwanted behaviour or avoid questioning authority. For boys, these expectations can be compounded by the belief that boys cannot be victims.
Prevention programmes must therefore address more than safe and unsafe touch. They need to consider how masculinity, power and authority influence boys' willingness to disclose abuse. For organisations working with boys, this means creating spaces to question harmful gender expectations, discuss consent and relationships, and seek help without judgement. Families, schools and child protection services must also be prepared to recognise boys as survivors.
Safeguarding in sport should be shaped by children, with adults accountable for their safety.
Sport can help girls develop confidence, friendships and leadership skills. Yet sporting environments involve relationships of authority and dependence. Coaches influence participation and opportunities, while physical contact, changing facilities, travel and competitions can create situations where children find it difficult to challenge inappropriate behaviour.
Safeguarding in sport was among the emerging concerns highlighted at the Congress. For Praajak, this has particular relevance to our Kabaddi for Empowerment programme for girls. One idea I took away from Melbourne was to develop safeguarding guidance with the girls themselves, rather than having adults determine all the rules. We could begin by asking when they feel safe or uncomfortable during training, what behaviour from coaches concerns them, whom they would trust with a complaint and what would make it easier to speak up. Their responses could inform a Kabaddi for Empowerment Safeguarding Charter, developed through a participatory process. This would make safeguarding part of empowerment. Girls would help define what a safe sporting environment means rather than simply follow rules created for them.
However, participation does not remove adult responsibility. Organisations must establish clear boundaries, accessible reporting procedures and effective responses to concerns. Teaching children to protect themselves is not the same as creating institutions that are accountable for their safety. We need both.
Supporting families before difficulties become crises
Family strengthening was a prominent theme at the RISE-UP Policy Forum. The session 'Hubbing' Our Way Out of Crisis: Rethinking Child Protection Through Upstream Support explored how coordinated community based support can reach families before problems require formal intervention. Another session, From Policy to Practice: A Benchmarking Workshop on Universal Parenting Support to Prevent Violence Against Children, involving UNICEF and Parenting for Lifelong Health, examined how parenting support could become part of national violence-prevention systems.
These discussions are relevant to India, where children's vulnerability may be shaped by poverty, migration, family stress, school exclusion, violence and harmful gender norms. Such difficulties may first become visible to teachers, anganwadi workers, health workers or community organisations rather than formal child protection authorities.
For Praajak, this reinforces the value of connecting different aspects of our work. Gender, adolescent participation, psychosocial support and family strengthening can form part of a wider protective environment rather than operate as separate interventions. A child experiencing violence may need a trusted adult, peer support and access to specialist services. Parents facing economic difficulties may need practical assistance rather than parenting advice alone. However, family strengthening must never come at the expense of children's safety. Where abuse occurs within families, protection must take priority.
Digital safety cannot be separated from children's everyday experiences
The session Child Online Safety in Practice: Emerging Evidence and Experience on Bans, Design, Rights, and What Actually Protects Children raised questions about the responsibilities of adults, institutions and technology platforms. Digital safety education often tells children to limit screen time, avoid strangers or report suspicious contact. While useful, this places much of the responsibility for safety on children themselves.
For Praajak, an important research question emerges: How are adolescents' online experiences connected to their offline experiences of gender, power and violence? A boy experiencing bullying because he does not conform to expectations of masculinity may also encounter harmful sexual content online or struggle to seek help when something inappropriate happens. These experiences may be interconnected, although programmes often address them separately.
Participatory research could help us understand these connections. It is also important to distinguish between accidental exposure to sexual content, curiosity about sexuality, coercion and harmful sexual behaviour. Treating all these experiences as misconduct risks increasing shame and discouraging disclosure.
From protecting children to creating protective environments
For me, the central lesson from Melbourne is that prevention cannot simply be a collection of awareness activities. It requires examining how the environments around children including families, schools, peers, sport, communities and digital platforms either strengthen their safety or increase their vulnerability.
For Praajak, this creates an opportunity to connect our existing work more deliberately: bringing gender and violence prevention together with adolescent participation, involving girls in safeguarding decisions and strengthening relationships between families, communities and services.
It also means recognising how much we still need to learn, particularly about boys' experiences of sexual violence, digital risks and what enables children to disclose abuse. The question is no longer only how we teach children to protect themselves, but how we create environments in which they are heard, believed and protected.
That is where I see the most important opportunity for the next phase of Praajak's work.
Praajak is a member of Family for Every Child, a global alliance of local civil society organisations working to improve the lives of children and families.
This is Blog 2 of our three-part series on the ISPCAN International Congress 2026.
More in this series:
Previous: Rethinking child protection: Key lessons from ISPCAN 2026.
Next: From local evidence to policy change: Lessons from Nepal's child protection work