The CHR is an independent agency mandated to protect and promote human rights. It is empowered to investigate all human rights violations and to monitor the government’s compliance with international human rights treaty obligations. The CHR has nonbinding authority to clear on military promotions. The commission has a chairperson and four members. CHR monitoring and investigating continued to be hamstrung by insufficient resources. Approximately one-third of the country’s 42,000 barangays (villages) had human rights action centers, which coordinated with CHR regional offices; however, the CHR’s regional and subregional offices remained understaffed and underfunded. The CHR nationwide budget for the year was $3.87 million (P197.38 million).
Section 5 Discrimination, Societal Abuses, and Trafficking in Persons
The law prohibits discrimination against women, children, and minorities; however, vague regulations and budgetary constraints hindered implementation of these protections.
Women
Violence against women, both in and out of the home, remained a serious problem. The 2004 Anti-Violence Against Women and their Children Act criminalizes physical, sexual, and psychological harm or abuse to women and their children committed by their spouses or partners. Through December the PNP reported 1,269 cases under the act and 1,892 other cases of wife battering and physical injuries under older laws. This number likely underreported significantly the level of violence against women in the country. A 2003 survey by the NGO Social Weather Station found that 12 percent of men admitted having physically harmed women (39 percent of these respondents indicated violence against their wives, 15 percent against their girlfriends, and 4 percent against their partners). Women in the same survey cited the following reasons for not reporting violence: embarrassment, not knowing how or to whom to report, belief that the violence was unimportant, and belief that nothing would be done.
The PNP and DSWD both maintained help desks to assist victims of violence against women and to encourage the reporting of crimes. With the assistance of NGOs, officers received gender sensitivity training to deal with victims of sexual crimes and domestic violence. Approximately 7 to 8 percent of PNP officers were women. The PNP has a Women and Children’s Unit to deal with these issues
Rape continued to be a problem, with most cases going unreported. During the year, the PNP reported 685 rape cases There were reports of rape and sexual abuse of women in police or protective custody–often women from marginalized groups, such as suspected prostitutes, drug users, and lower income individuals arrested for minor crimes.
Spousal rape and abuse are also illegal, but enforcement was ineffective.
Prostitution is illegal but was a widespread problem. Many women suffered exposure to violence through their recruitment, often through deception, into prostitution (see section 5, Trafficking). Penalties for prostitution are light, but detained prostitutes were sometimes subjected to administrative indignities and extortion. The DSWD continued to provide temporary shelter and counseling to women engaged in prostitution. From January to September, DSWD provided temporary shelter and counseling to 68 women who were victims of involuntary prostitution. Some local officials condoned a climate of impunity for those who exploited prostitutes. There were no convictions under the provision of the law criminalizing the act of engaging the services of a prostitute.
Sex tourism and trafficking in persons for sexual exploitation and forced labor were serious problems. An antitrafficking law outlaws a number of activities specifically related to trafficking and provides stiff penalties for convicted offenders (see section 5, Trafficking).
The law prohibits sexual harassment. However, sexual harassment in the workplace was thought to be widespread and underreported due to victims’ fear of losing their jobs. Female employees in special economic zones (SEZs) were particularly at risk; most were economic migrants who had no independent workers’ organization to assist with filing complaints. Women in the retail industry worked on three- to five month contracts and were often reluctant to report sexual harassment for fear their contracts would not be renewed.
The law does not provide for divorce, although courts generally recognize the legality of divorces obtained in other countries if one of the parties is a foreign national. The government recognizes religious annulment, but the process can be costly, which precludes annulment as an option for many women. Many lower-income couples simply separated informally without severing their marital ties. The family code provides that in child custody cases resulting from annulment, illegitimacy, or divorce in another country, children under the age of seven are placed in the care of the mother unless there is a court order to the contrary. Children over the age of seven normally also remained with the mother, although the father could dispute custody through the courts.
Extrajudicial Killings, Terrorism
