ABSTRACT
Safe environments that provide stability and protection from physical harm are essential to the optimal development of children. Yet in South Africa and elsewhere around the world, political strife, ethnic conflict, and criminal violence have proliferated in ways which seem indifferent to the hardships they impose on children and their families. As a result, countless children grow up without the stable and protected environs that best promote healthy development. Many still do well in spite of the conditions in which they are raised. Nevertheless it is clear that exposure to violence on such a scale is unquestionably detrimental to their health and well-being.
