In the research alliance “Global Network for Violence Prevention”, scientists from Germany and countries of the Global South are together addressing the topic of violence against children. Experts from various disciplines met at an international conference on invitation of the Daimler and Benz Foundation to discuss the current state of research and to develop new ideas for joint research and scientific transfer projects.

Scientists from Germany, Ghana, Tanzania, Turkey, and Uganda engaged in intensive discussion about the role of social norms, personal attitudes and convictions, along with contextual and structural factors in relation to the acceptance, frequency, and consequences of violence against children. They identified social norms as well as personal attitudes and convictions as key starting points for the prevention of violence. The research network developed and has already successfully tested the preventive school-based intervention Interaction Competencies with Children – for Teachers (ICC-T) in a number of African countries where violence in children’s upbringing is widespread and socially accepted. At the Ladenburger Roundtable, the researchers extended the intervention’s Theory of Change theoretical framework model to include the aspect of social norms and developed project ideas for empirically evaluating this extended model. They also discussed strategies for making research findings accessible to the community at large in the countries where the studies were conducted and for implementing evidence-based intervention on a large scale in cooperation with local partner organizations.

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