University Capacity for Children's Education to Prevent their Abuse and Exploitation

The paper explores the higher education institution experience activities regarding minors’ protection against abuse and exploitation within the international framework of the challenge under study. The research stands on the comparative analysis of the Lanzarote Committee documents, explored Parties’ replies to Question 2 (Education for children) of the Thematic Questionnaire and Question 8(a) (Education, awareness raising and training), first indent, of the General Overview Questionnaire. The analysis also took into account Academia's publications on the issue under study. The Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) faculty members’ participation in the Lanzarote Committee work also contributed to the research. The paper highlights qualitative analysis findings that cover such issues as the education contexts for preventive information delivery, their contents, tools and forms of disseminating preventive information, terminology used, parents’ engagement, situations of risks, etc. The above aspects are considered through the lenses of university engagement in the analysis. The paper argues that the university can contribute to capacity-building measures for minors’ education to prevent their abuse and exploitation; the university capacity to perform the relevant activities rests on its multiprofiled structure, comprehensive nature, and opportunities to collaborate with various agencies and engage specialists in pedagogy, law, medicine, psychology and psychiatry, etc. The research findings reveal that the university might play a significant role in shaping information, bridging institutional responses, coordinating the legislation, government policies and the public initiatives to promote action plans towards the nation-wide and international levels to protect minors and combat against their abuse and exploitation.