The party line is that Singapore was a miserable fishing village before LKY & the PAP stepped into rescue it, and LKY doubled down on "Asian Values" to justify his iron-fisted rule: better not take any chances with that dangerous democracy! But in fact pre-WW2 Singapore under British rule was already a prosperous, advanced trading metropolis and widely considered the second wealthiest city in Asia after Shanghai.
So Singapore committed to protect children from violence
https://www.unicef.org.uk/what-we-do/un-convention-child-rig...
And it seems Singapore (like some other countries) struggles to figure what that actually means, come to think about it.