Philippines has made great strides in its fight against the sexual exploitation of children but there is still much to be done

THE Philippines has made great strides in its fight against the sexual exploitation of children but there is still much to be done, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children Mama Fatima Singhateh said yesterday.

Singhateh made the statement in a press interaction in Makati City at the end of her 11-day visit to the country.

She said among the areas where the country has made positive developments in tackling sexual exploitation of children are in “improving the policy, legal and institutional frameworks.”

The State Department identified the efforts of the Philippines included identifying more victims, drafting standard operating procedures on the identification and monitoring of trafficking-related corruption cases, sentencing nearly all traffickers to significant prison terms, and creating an executive-level Department of Migrant Workers.

Last year, the Department of Justice reported that more than 370 children who are victims of online sexual abuse and exploitation were rescued by the authorities even amid the restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It also led to the arrest of 74 suspected traffickers.

The Bureau of Immigration also said 688 victims of human trafficking and illegal recruitment were also rescued last year, of which 326 are minors and 18 assuming the identities of other persons just to be able to leave the country.

The Department of Foreign Affairs also reported identifying 248 potential Filipino victims abroad from July to December 2021, primarily in the Middle East and Asia compared to the previous year's 2,429.

Overall, the State Department report said the Philippine government identified 1,802 victims of which 535 were victims of sex trafficking, 501 of forced labor, and 766 of unspecified exploitation acts.

It said that of the victims, 551 are males while 1,251 are females.

However, Singhateh said the government still needs to step up and confront issues to stop the Philippines from being a source of and destination country for child trafficking, forced marriage and sexual exploitation.

Among these issues are the challenges in assessing child marriage due to lack of data, problem of illegal adoption, economic disparities and exclusion of indigenous ethnic minority children, discrimination against LGBTQ children, as well as lack of trained officials or local workers at the barangay level to receive and assess reports of sexually exploited children.

Citing her visit to a child home center in Valenzuela City and a crisis intervention facility in the province of Bohol, Singhateh said there is a need for more financial and human resources in the campaign, as well as a separate center for children who are victims of sexual abuse and exploitation.

“I am concerned that local government and politics negatively impacts child protection due to frequent changes of personnel,” she said.

She also raised the need for prosecutors to have special training in handling such cases, at the same time noting the lack of trained adjudicators or special courts to handle child-specific cases.

The UN rapporteur also recommended a one-day hearing of cases involving child sexual abuse and exploitation.

She further recommended that the government create a centralized database of child abuse case cases, highlighting the importance of data in determining the level of intervention in addressing child sexual abuse and exploitation cases.

While the Philippines has maintained its Tier 1 status in the 2022 US State Department report in the campaign to eliminate trafficking in persons, the government was told that it failed to vigorously probe labor trafficking crimes and hold accountable officials complicit in the crime.

Countries in Tier 1 ranking — the highest ranking — are those which meet the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking with the government showing serious and sustained efforts to convict more human traffickers, identify victims and improve efforts to prevent more victims.

The Philippines has maintained its Tier 1 ranking since 2016.

To boost government efforts to stop child sexual abuse and exploitation, Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla stressed the need to already come up with the implementing rule and regulations of the SIM Card Registration law, which he said would ensure that telecoms would not be able to skirt their role in proliferation of messages that encourage child abuse.

He pointed out that perpetrators continue to do their nefarious act without fear of being discovered since they use prepaid SIM cards, which can easily be bought and discarded after use.

Remulla met with Singhateh Thursday.

“Telcos are skirting blame because they are profiting from this. I hope they will have a conscience and let us speed the crafting of the IRR,” Remulla said in Filipino, adding: “We are  asking Congress, the Senate and the House to speed up the working out of the IRR for the SIM Card Registration law so that it can be immediately implemented and we will be able to identify these perpetrators.”

Remulla said aside from this, he also discussed with Singhateh the “restrictive” money laundering mechanisms that have hindered the campaign against the perpetrators of sexual exploitation of children.

The DOJ chief also proposed that countries share databases of individuals with records of child sexual exploitation to prevent them from doing their illegal activities across borders, as he cited cases wherein suspects apprehended in the Philippines were later discovered to also have similar cases in other countries.

“There should be an alarm whenever anybody tries to enter that country who has that intention and it should be a worldwide alarm against these people who are already in the blacklist,” Remulla said, adding this will strengthen the campaign worldwide.