UNESCO has invited Professor Christina Salmivalli to join the international panel of experts to tackle school bullying

On 5 November 2020, UNESCO and the French Government will lead an International Conference on School Bullying. This conference will coincide with the first celebration of the International Day against Violence and Bullying at School, Including Cyberbullying, which was proclaimed by all UNESCO Member states in 2019.

The conference aims to foster global mobilisation around reducing school bullying by sharing and promoting good policy and practices.

The International Scientific Committee for the conference have invited experts from different regions of the world to form a Panel of Experts whose contributions will help draft the recommendations that will be presented during the conference, particularly to policy-makers across the world, including Ministers of Education. Professor Christina Salmivalli is one of those invited experts.

The panel is expected to make practical and evidence-based recommendations to policy-makers on what governments, particularly education authorities, should do to maximise the implementation of comprehensive education sector responses to school bullying that are effective in reducing the prevalence of bullying and maintaining it at a low level nationally over a sustained period of time.

The expert panel has been working on the recommendations since September. The results will be published by UNESCO after the conference.

Professor Salmivalli has done school-based research on bullying and its evidence-based prevention for more than 25 years. She has, together with her team, developed the KiVa antibullying program (www.kivaprogram.net) which has been awarded both nationally and internationally, and is widely implemented in schools in Finland and elsewhere.