The Unbully Project – The time for anti-bullying laws is now!
Chenaya Kulatunga and Kajanga Kulatunga
Bullying is unwanted aggressive behaviour that is repeated over time and involves an imbalance of power or strength. This involves physical, emotional, social as well as cyber-bullying. Sri Lanka currently lacks any laws to deter perpetrators of bullying. Children are especially vulnerable as the country lacks a specific Child Protection Act. Legal protections against bullying often give protection to children and adults living in countries like Australia, Canada and the United States of America. For the most part, they are strictly enforced and are a fabric of the moral code of conduct in such countries. Unfortunately, children in Sri Lanka do not have such protection.
Sri Lankan society has not recognized the lifetime negative impact of bullying – to both victim and perpetrator. This is evidenced by the lack of a definitive word for bullying in Sinhala and Tamil, the two main national languages in the country. This makes communication about the topic of bullying with a majority of the population impossible.
Due to the socioeconomic situation in the country, often school syllabi and achievement awards focus exclusively on competitive academic learning. Celebrating ethics, responsible behaviour and good citizenship often tend to be ignored.
Moreover, there have been a series of unfortunate teen suicides in Sri Lanka as a result of bullying in recent years. These preventable tragedies highlight the urgent need for laws to ensure the safety of students.
Background
Six months ago, Chenaya started an awareness program by using her own doodles and messages about the need to recognise and stop acts of bullying. She connected with people at such public events and spoke about the importance of awareness about bullying. She called it ‘The Unbully Project’. Her messages were put on bookmarks and other stationery items. These were made available for students at festive and other markets with the hope of getting the anti-bully message to classrooms.
A vast number of students connected with her and shared personal stories about bullying they had undergone within and outside of schools. It became very evident that many students, teachers and parents still fail to recognize signs of bullying and fail to take safe, appropriate actions to prevent and address such acts. As a result children continue to suffer, many in silence.
During the development and distribution of her work, it became apparent that she couldn’t get her message to any more that 5% of the population as it was impossible to translate most of her work to Sinhala and Tamil. This was predominantly due to the lack of definitive words that best describe and define the act of bullying in these two languages.
This lead to her writing to the Minister of Education, requesting that the government;
- Declare a National Anti-bullying week in all schools.
- Amend and develop the National curriculum to incorporate lessons about anti-bullying from Kindergarten through Grade 12. Require all schools not following the National Curriculum to present their equivalent plans.
- Develop an anti-bullying vocabulary in Sinhala and Tamil so that it enables open and honest conversations across society.
Although the government has announced positive steps in related subject areas, we are yet to hear back from the Ministry of any concrete steps being taken to address bullying directly.
We now strongly believe that introducing anti-bullying laws to protect children in Sri Lanka is imperative. The Constitution of Sri Lanka makes clear that if there is a conflict between the Sinhala wording and those of English or Tamil, the Sinhala version shall prevail. Drafting a law will require the authorities to develop a word and the full vocabulary set around the issue of bullying for the law to be gazetted by parliament.
In order to help us influence the government, we call on all concerned citizens to sign our online petition to help make our schools and society safe for everyone. You can choose to keep your name hidden from public view for privacy reasons when signing the petition. The Unbully Project is neither soliciting nor accept any financial donations nor is it affiliated to any political movement. We want to get a new law passed to protect the children of Sri Lanka so that every child can be safe and happy in school.
The petition is available here: https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/introduce-anti-bullying-laws-to-protect-children
Chenaya Kulatunga is a 9 year old Sri Lankan-Australian student living and schooling in Colombo.
Kajanga Kulatunga is her father. You can reach them at theunbullyproject@gmail.com.
