UK Human Rights activities in the Philippines
GENERAL
In the Philippines, the British Embassy's human rights work has had an immediate impact in the local communities and improved the lives of many Filipinos. In addition, many government personnel have increased their knowledge, understanding and respect for human rights as a direct result of projects and activities undertaken by the Embassy.
Torture
Recently, the concentration was on tackling torture and ill treatment. The Embassy supported training on legal and human rights standards for journalists covering the criminal justice system, to help them report on, and deter, malpractice. The Embassy funded the Philippines Commission on Human Rights to develop a standard curriculum for human rights training in police training colleges and to train the trainers on how to deliver this. Another project trains police and social workers dealing with domestic violence against women in Davao, Mindanao.
During the past year, the Embassy helped to fund and plan an inter-governmental conference of Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Pacific island states on the International Criminal Court, hosted by the Philippine government, to raise awareness and reduce apprehension in an area of the world that lags far behind in numbers of ratification. We lobbied towards abolishing the death penalty, which still exists in the Philippines.
Corporate Social Responsibility
Another Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) project helped to build links between the people of Mindanao at a community level with very encouraging results. A new and successful area of work has been corporate social responsibility where we are encouraging businesses (including the British business community) to contribute to building peace through their actions and relations with local communities.
Child Rights
Poverty, political upheaval, domestic violence and family breakdown, sexual abuse, exploitation and HIV/AIDS are just some of the reasons why children are forced to survive alone on the streets with inadequate shelter, health care, education, protection and guidance.
It is difficult to estimate the number of street children in any one country. Many are highly mobile while others work on the streets but go home to families from time to time or at night. In its National Report of 2001that followed up the World Summit for Children, the Philippines reported around 44,000 highly visible street children in the country. This figure stands in sharp contrast to the estimated 1.5 million reported by the Department of Social Welfare and Development in 1995. Whatever the real figure is, there are clearly many children living exceptionally difficult lives on the streets, vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. For the past three years the British Embassy has worked with Save the Children (UK) on the Programme for Abused and Exploited Children (PAEC). Run through 12 local partners in communities and schools throughout the Philippines this programme addresses the different problems faced by street children, from sexual abuse to child labour.
Daniel Painter, former Third Secretary (Human Rights) says, "Our work on child rights has a significant impact on the lives of the most vulnerable children throughout the Philippines. We are supporting a project with the Save the Children Fund and British Gas to protect exploited and abused children. Support for the emerging network of Child Protection Units in hospitals throughout the country, and further training for Philippine police officers on interviewing techniques for children has complemented this work."
We further complement this work by supporting a mobile clinic that educates, cares for and feeds street children in Manila and we have helped to establish a network of child protection units at hospitals across the country. These units will be a vital component of an integrated inter-agency drive to combat child abuse, something to which street children are particularly vulnerable. Both of these projects have proved particularly successful, offering children an opportunity to receive extra nutrition, medical care and a safe area in which to play as well as providing local NGOs with an opportunity to respond effectively to problems and abuses that the street children face every day.
Juvenile Justice
Access to justice is a problem for millions of children world-wide, as it can also be for adults. We support a number of initiatives that seek to promote and improve standards of juvenile justice generally. In the Philippines, a UK police training programme for Filipino police officers on the sensitivities and skills needed for dealing with children, which has run since 1997, has recently ended. The FCO also funded a project co-ordinated by the Consortium for Street Children, a UK NGO, intended to protect street children in juvenile justice systems in the Philippines, among other countries.
Sexual Exploitation of Children
The most high profile forms of sexual exploitation of children are those drawn into prostitution in order to survive, the victims of paedophiles and those forces into it by organised trafficking gangs. However most sexual abuse of children takes place in the home. We work multilaterally and bilaterally to combat this growing and world-wide phenomena. Effective strategies for eliminating them through social protection services will aim to strengthen the capacity of families and carers to provide a secure and stable framework for childcare and development.
According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), there are an estimated 100,000 child prostitutes in the Philippines. A training programme by UK police officers has helped focus attention on the sexual abuse of children and given their Filipino counterparts the necessary skills to tackle it. We are co-funding an EU project to raise awareness among major European tour operators of paedophile activity in targeted holiday destinations. The UK branch of an international coalition of NGOs called ECPAT International (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) works with a well-known tour group to draw up information sheets and train employees at high risk destinations to recognise suspicious behaviour.
FCO funding for human rights
Training government departments and human rights organisations on UN human rights mechanisms
This project will give training to officials and NGOs on human rights standards, on data gathering and UN systems and procedures to encourage and improve timely reporting by the government to the UN Treaty Bodies.
National workshops on the role of judges, prosecutors and public defence attorneys in recognising and preventing torture
This project aims to tackle torture by targeting 180 law officials, including judges in Manila, on how to recognise, prevent and deal with torture cases.
The British Embassy is now recognised as a leading overseas partner working to protect human rights in the Philippines
