For children to be safe, each and every individual in society has a role to play.

That's the word from humanitarian aid organisation, Save the Children.

Child Protection Week runs until Sunday and government has called on South Africans to show their support by ensuring the most vulnerable in society do not suffer abuse.

"Children face violence every day and our particular focus is around violence in the home in the form of corporal punishment in the school in the form of corporal punishment because that type of physical punishment is the most common and most acceptable form of violence," Save the Children's Divya Naidoo said.

Naidoo said that they were training organizations on how to teach positive parenting skills so children could be raised in non-violent ways.

"SA is a very violent country and it's because we start normalizing violence from a very young age. So when children just touch something, you smack them on their fingers, so children start to believe this is acceptable and they grow up as adults believing that violence is acceptable and it works."

She added that they had also run extensive programs to help teachers manage situations without using violence.

"We are seeing more and more child-on-child violence in schools, so when a child hits another child, we'll call them a bully but when an adult hits a child, we'll call it discipline but it's both violent actions and children have learnt it from adults."

Save our Children has identified teenage pregnancy as the other big issue currently facing South African children.