ABSTRACT
We are never very far away from violence: every day there is violence, both real and fictional, on television; there are violent video games to provide entertainment; there is violence both within sport, as seen in football, and for sport as with boxing; there is human violence against other species as with hunting; there is violence inside the family home and there is violence in public places; there is violence against children and against adults; there is violence against men and violence against women; there is violence that overwhelms nations and communities; and there is violence against the individual. In his Foreword to the World Health Organization (WHO) World Report on Violence and Health (Krug, Dahlberg, Mercy, Zwi, & Lozano, 2002) – a publication that refers to violence as a ‘global public health problem’ – Nelson Mandela wrote: ‘The twentieth century will be remembered as a century marked by violence. It burdens us with its legacy of mass destruction, of violence inflicted on a scale never seen and never before possible in human history’ (Krug et al., 2002: ix).
