US on Human Rights in Philippines: Unsolved Cases, Unpunished Perpetrators

Child abuse remained a problem. DSWD offices served 7,037 victims of child abuse from January to September, of whom 65 percent were girls. Approximately 53 percent of the girls were victims of sexual abuse, while 4 percent (184 girls) were victims of sexual exploitation. The majority of the boys had been abandoned or neglected. Several cities ran crisis centers for abused women and children. The problem of foreign pedophiles continued, and the government continued to prosecute accused pedophiles vigorously. Some children also were victims of police abuse while in detention for committing minor crimes.

Child prostitution continued to be a serious problem. In 2006 the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) ordered the closure of four establishments for allegedly prostituting minors. The trials for the cases against two of the four establishments were on-going at year’s end, while charges against the two other establishments were not pursued.

The NPA and ASG continued actively to recruit minors both as combatants and noncombatants (see section 1.g.).

The government estimated that there were at least 22,000 street children nationwide, while UNICEF estimated that there were approximately 250,000 street children. Welfare officials believed that the number increased as a result of widespread unemployment in rural areas. Many street children appeared to be abandoned and engaged in scavenging or begging.

A variety of national executive orders and laws provide for the welfare and protection of children. Police stations have child and youth relations officers to ensure that child suspects are treated appropriately. However, procedural safeguards were often ignored in practice. The BJMP stated that 485 minors were held on “preventative detention” while their trials were ongoing, and only 12 of those were convicted and serving their sentences. Many child suspects were detained for extended periods without access to social workers and lawyers and were not segregated from adult criminals. NGOs believed that children held in integrated conditions with adults were highly vulnerable to sexual abuse, recruitment into gangs, forced labor, torture, and other ill treatment. There were also reports that many children detained in jails appeared to have been arrested without warrants.

In May 2006 President Arroyo signed the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act, which, among other reforms, changes the age of criminal responsibility from nine to 15 years of age. The law prohibits the detention of minors in jails while undergoing trial. During the year government agencies and NGOs worked to transfer minor prisoners to rehabilitation centers and to secure the release of minors wrongfully imprisoned and of those below 15 years of age. DSWD ran 11 regional youth rehabilitation centers for juvenile offenders. There were three detention centers for children in Manila.

Trafficking in Persons

Trafficking in persons is prohibited under the law, which defines several activities related to trafficking in persons as illegal and imposes stiff penalties–up to life imprisonment–for convicted offenders. Nonetheless, trafficking remained a problem in the country. The country was a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and forced labor. A significant number of men and women who migrate abroad for work were subjected to conditions of involuntary servitude. Women and children were also trafficked within the country, primarily from rural areas to urban areas for forced labor as domestic workers and factory workers and for sexual exploitation. A smaller number of women were occasionally trafficked from China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia to the country for sexual exploitation.

Both adults and children were trafficked domestically from poor, rural, areas in the southern and central parts of the country to major urban centers, especially Metro Manila and Cebu, but also increasingly to cities in Mindanao. A significant percentage of the victims of internal trafficking were from Mindanao and were fleeing the poverty and violence in their home areas. Approximately 75 percent of the trafficking victims provided with temporary shelter and counseling by the NGO Visayan Forum Foundation were from Mindanao. The Visayan region was also a source of trafficking victims. Women and girls were far more at risk of becoming victims of trafficking than men and boys.

Traffickers targeted persons seeking overseas employment. An estimated eight million Filipinos worked overseas, approximately 10 percent of the population and 20 percent of the workforce. Most recruits were females ages 13 to 30 from poor farming families. The traffickers generally were private employment recruiters and their partners in organized crime. Many recruiters targeted persons from their own hometowns, promising a respectable and lucrative job.

Although the government pursued trafficking-related cases under the antitrafficking law as well as other related laws, its efforts were hampered by slowness of the courts, resource constraints within law enforcement agencies, and corruption. The DOJ assigned 17 prosecutors to handle the preliminary investigation and prosecution of trafficking cases at the national level, in addition to other prosecutors in the regional trial courts. The principal investigative agencies were the National Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Immigration, the Philippine Center for Transnational Crimes, and the PNP’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group. The government cooperated with international investigations of trafficking.