BANGKOK – At the age of 12, a Filipino girl can legally consent to sexual intercourse. It is the lowest age in Asia and among the lowest in the world for an act that has physical and mental implications on “subjects who are not always able to act in full awareness” and who “are less likely to know how to ask for help “Wrote opponents of the current law.
The anachronistic norms of the ultra-Catholic archipelago that actually allow an adult to obtain the consent of a teenager by the use of force or threat, are finally about to be changed after 40 years of civil battles, and soon by 12 years. legal age will pass, barring surprises, to 16. After the yes by a large majority of Parliament in December and the almost unanimous one of the Senate in recent days, only the signature of President Rodrigo Duterte, already in agreement with the changes, is missing to put an end to a legislation stuck in the 19th century. At that time throughout Europe and Spain – which ruled the Philippines for 3 centuries until 1898 – the code set the age of consent between 10 and 12 years, but only in the Philippines has it remained the same since it was promulgated. the current one as far back as 1930.
Child abuse
Opponents of the law, including numerous women’s committees, denounced that millions of children remained vulnerable to exploitation with an exponential increase in reports of images depicting child sexual abuse during the pandemic, as well as trafficking cases and rising statistics. of teenage pregnancies, among the highest in Asia. Since 2019 in the Philippines, 55 out of 1,000 women have given birth between the ages of 15 and 19 in the Philippines, compared to a world average of 41.6 out of 1,000 child mothers and 16.7 in the United States.
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Other data from the Women’s Party Study Center reveal that in 2016 “a woman or a child every 53 minutes” was raped in the Philippines, although their representative Arlene Brosas del Gabriela believes that the reality of child sexual abuse is “much more widespread “.
The new bill includes a number of other provisions to strengthen its enforcement, improve investigations and the criminal process to provide greater support and confidentiality to victims of exploitation and abuse. But the difficulties still to be overcome to see it applied are the same encountered in the last 91 years, starting with the “lack of education of the same authorities on aspects such as the importance of children’s cognitive development and their ability to give informed consent”, said Patrizia Benvenuti, UNICEF Philippines Child Protection Officer.
Women’s rights
Children’s rights are indeed a relatively new issue in the country where campaigns for women’s rights have made great progress. Numerous legislators – now finally in a clear minority – continue to argue as in the past that it is not necessary to change the age of consent because the country already has laws against child abuse, such as the one approved in 1992 against those who push those who is under the age of 18 “for money, profit, coercion or influence from any adult, union or group”. The exploitation of children in the burgeoning porn industry was also punished, but in each of these cases the child must prove under traumatizing interrogation that he was pushed against his will.
It is a confession that becomes difficult, as the UNICEF representative points out, especially when the perpetrator is a family member or an acquaintance who threatens them, or the “most frequent case”. For this reason, the new law establishes that – with or without consent – any sexual act on girls under the age of 16 is illegal and punishable. The exception is for peers and adolescents between whom there is no more than two year difference.
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