Promote children's rights, UNICEF tells bets

MANILA, Philippines - Presidential aspirants were urged yesterday to promote protection of children’s rights in their platforms of government.

Speaking at a forum in San Juan, lawyer Alberto Muyot, United Nations Children’s Fund child protection specialist, said the next president must be concerned with children issues like discrimination of children born out of wedlock, children with disabilities and children of indigenous peoples.

“It is the responsibility of the next president to start acting on these recommendations from the time he assumes his position,” he said.

“In 2017, the Philippines will have to submit the next report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child and that would mean a good eight years for the next president to act on the recommendations that emanate from the reports of the government, the alternative report by non-government organizations and the recommendations of the United Nations.”

Muyot also urged Congress to pass pending bills seeking to protect the rights of children: the Anti-Corporal Punishment Bill, Anti-Torture Bill, Anti-Child Pornography Bill, the Foster Care Bill, and the Age of Statutory Rape Bill. 

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has already recommended the enactment of these bills, he added.

In the forum organized by the Child Rights Network, officials from the government and non-government organizations presented reports on the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN CRC), which was ratified by the Philippine government in 1990.

The UN CRC is an international convention that outlines the civil, economic, social, and cultural rights of children.

Integral to its full compliance is for the countries, including the Philippines, to submit periodic reports on the progress of implementation of the numerous articles contained in the CRC. – Helen Flores