Fiji Human Rights Commission needs to re-evaluate its own education advocacy strategy on school bullying - Raj

Fiji Human Rights and Anti Discrimination Commission Director, Ashwin Raj says the commission needs to re-evaluate and look at its own education advocacy strategy on bullying in schools.

He says that they also need to reevaluate the ways that the commission can actively engage parents, teachers and children in a conversation in the same stage.

Raj says that there needs to be concerted efforts for the commission to work with the Education system and communities and parents to provide for a much more sustained solution to the problem of bullying.

He says that if there is a entrenched culture of bullying then we are not going to move towards a long term solution.

Raj says that people need to recognize that bullying is not something which is confined to schools only and that there is a need to find out what are the roots of bullying.

The Director says that sometimes when children come from an environment where there is violence at home, they tend to mimic such violent behavior because they think its okay to exercise violence.

He says that its very important that teachers take some time out and start talking in classrooms about what bullying is.

Raj has sent out a strong message to all parents, to take all complaints of bullying seriously and act on it.

He has told parents not to wait for any tragedy to transpire before they start acting on these complaints, because lives are at stake.

Meanwhile the Minister for Education, Rosy Akbar had earlier confirmed that the Ministry is working on a mechanism to deal with cases of bullying in schools.

She says that details of those mechanisms are to be released soon.

FijiVillage continue to get reports that there is a culture of bullying in some schools which is also encouraged by some parents, teachers and senior students.

Their mindset is that the best way to discipline students is through punching them up or instilling other forms of discipline through violence.

There are cases where some teachers and ex‑students have allegedly said that this is the best way to discipline junior students.

Some ex‑students of some of the schools have confirmed to FijiVillage that this culture has existed for years.

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