Republic Act 11648, signed into law by President Rodrigo Duterte in March, essentially increased the age of sexual consent in the country to 16 and is expected to have a chilling effect on adults who might try to have sexual relations with children below that age.
Popcom Executive Director Dr. Juan Antonio Perez III also added that the law may address the thousands of new teenage pregnancies recorded in the Philippines every year, which the Popcom had earlier tagged as a national and social emergency.
Atty. Maria Margarita Ardivilla, a child protection specialist from Unicef, added that it also increases the standard of protection for children, as the Philippines was one of the countries which had one of the lowest ages of sexual consent before, prompting the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to urge the government to reevaluate it.
Non-governmental organization Save the Children Philippines urged that a “massive” information awareness campaign on the law should be rolled out so that local government units and those working in child protection will know its provisions as it is imperative to have competent people who will provide services to children who report sexual violations.
Effective implementation will also require frontline protection workers such as police officers, social workers, child psychologists and pediatricians to be equipped with the necessary skills to respond to reports of sexual abuse committed against children.
The Department of Education is also tasked to add in its curriculum “age appropriate” subjects on children’s protection and rights related to the law.
Increasing the age of sexual consent is long overdue but we have to remember that it is not a silver bullet. Even if the law has been amended, it will still take a village to protect from exploitation and abuse, especially in a country where men have gotten away with it for so long.
Now that we have an additional tool to shield society from these predators that victimize our young, let’s do our share to do a better job than before.*
