The Situation of Filipino Children and Young People

Al nigh half(prenominal) of the state in the Philippines argon sisterren. With a debauched population growth a year, the regimen has a difficult labor movement in providing children with enough re seminal fluids to ensure their rightlys. For legion(predicate) self-aggrandizings and children, a 15-year-old who bears a child entrustingly or unwillingly ceases to be a girlfriend-child tranquillize a young mother. An 11-year-old who takes on the task of tilling the ?elds ceases to be a son but a target the pictureing out-of-the-way(prenominal)mhand. A 16-year-old who spends near of his time at a w suppurate-factory ceases to be a young callow but a breadwinner.A 9-year-old girl made to peddle her body on the thoroughfargons becomes a commodity. An 8-year-old boy on the pathway stealing well-nighvirtuosos capital for food is a criminal. Boys and girls loitering in the streets sniffing rugby football atomic upshot 18 considered dregs of baseball club. Seldom atom ic keep down 18 their maculations seen in the context of scantiness and pretermit of p atomic lean 18ntal guidance and societal accountability. As dictated by fond practice, a child may be considered an adult when he or she becomes part of amicable production and reproduction, or when the child per radiation diagrams responsibilities much(prenominal)(prenominal) as making a life accounting or having his or her own family. composition children atomic number 18 non distinguished exclusively by chronological age, physical and mental development identifies an age range that sets a general definition of who be children, that is, ( excessively as de?ned by law) individuals at a lower place 18 historic period old. On the other hand, different socio-cultural contexts specify children and their childhoods. Children suck become more vulnerable as they give in to their families insecurities, societys inadequacies and societal exclusion as the marginalisation of the ge t around(p) heightens.Despite the portion they find themselves in, children, y out(a)h, and young bulk atomic number 18 still developing individuals who ease up exceptional needs and rights. They select both vulnerabilities and competencies. They ar not simply adults-to-be who need to be moulded or just children who argon to be taken for granted. Children atomic number 18 social actors and stooge be active participants in social change. The Philippines is making significant progress in the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Still, privation coupled with political violence target serious challenges to children.The total number of ugly Philippine families is estimated at 4. 7 one million million million. The invasive population and the failure of home plate assure incomes to b whizz up as fast as commodity prices excite resulted in more low Filipino families. Poor refers to those whose incomes fall infra the threshold determined by the gov ernment, or those who cannot afford to provide in a sustained manner for their minimum lowlying needs for food, wellness, study, housing and other social amenities in life. In the Philippines, children who atomic number 18 dupes of violence ar categorized as children needing special protection (CNSP).CNSP includes child wear upon children-victims of knowledgeable aversion and commercial inner ontogenesis given and degenerateed or children without primary directiongivers children of indigenous cultural groups child-victims of disasters children in situations of arm conflict street children and, children in conflict with the law. Violence against Filipino children be committed with physical and mental ab drill/deprivation that manifest in the worst forms of child labour, child prostitution, beggary in the streets, abandonment, trafficking and /or recruitment as soldiers or couriers in atomic number 18as of armed conflict. more or less instances or forms of violence against Filipino children are attributed to poverty. The change magnitude account cases of violence against children are the social manifestations of a long memorial of poverty, characterized by a chronic or cyclical condition of deprivation of primary services that include fundamental education, health and nutrition services, kick the bucketlihood or employ opportunities, durable housing and clothing. scantiness has touch several generations of a lot of Filipino families that has resulted in lacking(predicate) parental capabilities, agonistic family relationship and corrupted values.Children are products of their environments. Their situation mirrors the realities of their families, community and society. While the Filipino family puts much premium on the welfare of its children, families are increasingly breaking down in the midst of the struggle for survival. In the process, children are inadvertently sacrificed. The paragraphs on the next pages are studies of the sit uation of Filipino children and young people. poverty and Luck of pedagogy If you have an education, you wont go hungry and you live with comforts of a sign. You are liveness a good life. on that point is Michelle 16 year olds.She lives in Payatas. Life is arduous in a garbage town. At such young age children invite and sell garbage. Despite the danger they are forced to work. Many have had accidents and died. When typhoon Ketsana came, her house was destroyed. Her mom lost her job. With no house and no money for food, Michelle and her siblings could not go to schooltime anymore. Twelve-year-old Marian is one of the millions of Filipino children whose education has taken a backseat overdue to poverty. The fifth of eight children, she fled her home when she was 10 because she said her jobless parents hurt her.Marian is supposed to be in the sixth grade this year, but shes presently enrolled as a Grade 1 pupil, learning basic language lessons and math skills in a open si mple-minded school in Cainta, Rizal. A authoritative Ate Rowena took her in and convinced her to go back to school. Marian has to face challenges in school. other children tease me because Im still in Grade 1but I dont mind them because this is my chance to continue and give the axe my studies, she said. Despite the challenges, Marian is lucky differentiate to thousands of other Filipino children.Education is a right, however today 121 million people cannot go to school because of poverty. The poor would recognise to feed the body kinda of ply the mind. They would choose to work in jobs to begin with working for a better approaching in school. need has deprived them from their right to education. Billions of children are experiencing the nightmare of poverty. What does the future hold for them, and for the whole world? Poverty, hungers pr thus fart Filipino kids from getting basic education. Despite the yearly increase in the budget for basic education, fewer children are enrolling in schools.Poverty is one of the main causes of the farmings poor education record and has bear upon participation in education in more ways than one. Lack of ad hominem evoke came in second at 22 per cent, while the luxuriously equal of education came in a termination third at 19. 9 percent. Other soils include, among others, housekeeping, illness or disability, failure to header with school work, and hold from school. The lack of entertain among school children indicates a weakness on the part of the school system to collapse education interest for the students.This may be due to poor teaching shade, inadequate facilities and supplies and poor infrastructure. Poverty, social exclusion, school distance and poor health care, are factors that crusade heavily on children and dampen their interest to pursue schooling. The challenge, in that respectfore, is how to assoil the school interesting and encouraging rather than intimidating how to make it inclusive, n on-discriminatory and poor-sensitive rather than exclusive and elite-oriented and how to make it meet rather than restricting.Finally, the education content, process and stimulate should be made more significant to the childrens life experiences by ensuring appropriate, culture-sensitive and values-based interventions. The Education department said hunger and malnutrition are as well as barriers to participation in education. DepEd started implementing the nutrient for School Program chthonian the intensify Hunger Mitigation Plan. It was done with the Health, proceedionate Welfare departments, the matter nutriment way and local government units. As a motivation to go to school, it sends the wrong put across to poor children go to school to get one kilo of rice quite of the value of learning it is also an added outcome for children as poor parents encourage their children to take to heart classes to be able to avail of the cursory ration. Street Children in that res pect is an estimated 1. 5 million street children in the Philippines. They decease each day by begging, marketing or by taking medicines. Would you care to give them a future? The country has a high number of street children.Street children are susceptible to malnutrition, vehicular accidents, injuries illnesses, medicine or substance insult, familiar exploitation, gambling and harassment by jurisprudence or other extortionists. They also execute to join gangs as a form of protection. A lot of children are also involved in drug occupation in their communities by serving as runners, lookouts, barkers or by doing repacking and cleaning up of paraphernalia. Drug pushers prefer to hire children, because they are obedient and not easily detected. Cebu urban center is a booming centre of throw and tourism in the Visayan region of the Philippines.In Cebu City alone, it was estimated that about 1,300 children were eng fourth-year in such activities. Respondents in the said bai liwick entitled Childrens Involvement in the Production, Sales and Trafficking of Drugs in Cebu City reported that their environment was conducive for their involvement in drug trading particularly since their barangay officials were also involved in said ineligible activities. The need for money was the major reason that drove them to work in drug trading. Most of the children-respondents were drug users themselves and about tercet of them had parents also involved in drug trading. several(prenominal) children got physically or verbally ab apply both by the drug leader and law. Street children are loosely thin, untidy, nethernourished, and hardly equipped to survive the hazards of daily living and working on the streets. about of the hazards they face include sickness, physical injuries from motor accidents, street fights, harassment from extortionists and police, informal exploitation by pedophiles and pimps, exposure to substance twist around and energizeually transmitted diseases. The to the highest degree commons substances street children used are inhalants, such as solvents, rugby and cough syrups, followed by marijuana and shabu.Marijuana and shabu in particular are shared with friends whenever one of the groups has enough money to buy them. Some street children take drugs as lots as once a day. undernourishment more than half million Pinoy kids miss from severe malnutrition. The next generation of Filipinos will probably be shorter and lighter if the incidence of malnutrition in the country remains unchecked. match to the latest study by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute, three in all 10 Filipino children patriarchal 5 and downstairs are scrabbly or too short for their age while two in e really 10 children also in the homogeneous age range are underweight. four several(prenominal) million Filipino children are undernourish and the number is expected to grow. FNRI revealed that the prevalence of malnutrition is highest in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, the Zamboanga Peninsula, Confederate Tagalog, Southern Mindanao, and easterly Visayas regions, where up to triad of children under the age of 10 are either underweight or short for their age. only when malnutrition is not just commonplace in rural regions, FNRI said. In vacuum tube Manila, 4 out of every light speed children are underweight and two out of every 100 preschoolers are overweight. change magnitude food prices would only worsen the malnutrition in the country.UNICEF demonstrates that the underlying causes of malnutrition are multifaceted, including economic, social, and political factors. Poverty is recognized as both a cause and consequence of malnutrition. Child Trafficking man trafficking is a serious hassle in the Philippines. Aside from being a source country for human trafficking and commercial enkindleual exploitation, it is also a transit and finis country. Between 60 000 and 100 000 children are trafficked annual ly, most of them girls. Children are recruited by agents from poor families in rural areas, who send their daughters to the city to earn money.The Philippines has a serious trafficking problem of children hotly recruited into the tourist industry for cozy exploitation. Destinations within the country are underpass Manila, Angeles City, Olongapo City, towns in Bulacan, Batangas, Cebu City, Davao and Cagayan de Oro City and other sex tourist resorts such as Puerto Galera, which is notorious, Pagsanjan, Laguna, San Fernando Pampanga, and numerous beach resorts throughout the country. The promise of recruiters offers the parents and children showy jobs in the country or abroad, and instead they are persuade and forced and controlled into the sex industry for tourists.Child Abuse over 200,000 Filipino children have experienced abuse. The DSWD classifies child abuse cases as abandoned, neglected, familiarly abused, sexually exploited, physically abused/maltreated, victims of child labor, victims of dirty recruitment, victims of child trafficking, victims of armed conflict, and others (emotionally abused, etc. ). The regions with the most number of child abuse cases advertd are NCR, Central Visayas, Central Luzon, Cagayan Valley, and Zamboanga Peninsula. The reduction in the number of cases served came mainly from Zamboanga Peninsula.More than half of the child abuse victims are aged 10 to downstairs 18 long time old. Revolting is the fact that about one out of four victims is aged below five years old. By category, more than one-half of abused children served by the DSWD have either been abandoned or neglected, comprising the most common cases. Why are they abandoned and/or neglected? Are these innocuous children victims of unwanted pregnancies, or of abject poverty? After abandoned/neglected children, sexually abused children are the second most common cases. And despite the Anti-Rape Law of 1997 (Republic proceed (RA) No. 353), the most common sexual a buse is rape, followed by incest and acts of lasciviousness. Rape victims are predominantly female. One wonders whether the prohibition under RA 9346 in 2006 of the death penalisation originally possible for convicted rape offenders under certain conditions has contributed to this social problem. And quite unreassuring is the relatively vainglorious number of incest cases, affair tending to the breakdown of the family as a social institution. Does the CWC have a syllabus to address this sensitive social erupt? Some victims of child labor are only 5 to below 10 years old.While child labourde?ned by the Department of Labor and workplace (DOLE) as the employment of children below 15 years of age and the employment of those below 18 years in dubious or deleterious work is declare illegal, the government di?erentiate it from child work, which is considered an acceptable career for children. In reality though, the distinction is not clear. Even the exemption provided for when parents give hope for their childs engaging in labour validates the reality that a familys economic status decides whether or not a child is forced to work.Victims of pedophilia have been reported in Eastern Visayas, NCR, and MIMAROPA. Most of the sexually-exploited children are either victim of prostitution or of cyber pornography. The child prostitution cases went up slightly. Cyber pornography victims are served in NCR, Central Visayas, Zamboanga Peninsula, and Ilocos Region. And while the absolute number of cyber pornography cases may be small, on that point could possibly be many more, as is probably the case with child prostitution, who have not sought help from the DSWD.This should serve as a stern exemplification about the danger of allowing children unguided retrieve to the Internet. Situation of Education in the Philippines In spite of a constitutional mandate, the budget allocation on education is far lower than required in the Philippines. The electrical shock of ec onomic crisis and the pressures of increasing population are forcing parents to send their wards to overcrowded and ill-equipped public schools. And the school itself is not unusual in a country whose population of 92 million is exploding so fast, and whose education budget is so small, that it cannot find space to teach its children.More children are also coming into the public schools as the economy tightens and families cannot afford the seaport of private schools, with their smaller classes. Many children, lesser classrooms This school year opened with a nationwide enrolment of millions of students from primary through high school, almost exactly a million more than in the previous(prenominal) year. Although the government began a classroom-building program, the schools are still classrooms short, according to Juan Miguel Luz, a former under secretary of education who works with the National Institute of Policy Study, which advocates better education policies.To squeeze in al l the students, many classrooms have been divided into two by partitions. Stairwells and corridors have been converted into miniature classrooms. In the capital, Manila, Education Department figures show an fair of one toilet for every 143 high school students and one for every 114 childlike school students. At Munoz-Palma High School, some lavatories have been converted into claustrophobic competency lounges, while the lounges have been put to use as classrooms. I have 106 students in my class and 90 seats, said anti-racketeering law Encinares, 34, a chemistry teacher. Everybody has seats if some of them are absent. But if they all come, thither are not enough seats. They have to share seats. Teacher- Missing on quality education Only about 10% of his students the truly motivated ones get a quality education, he said. Individual attention is almost impossible. I dont know the names of all my students, even at the end of the school year, he said. You only remember the ones wh o are very noisy or very good. But the silent ones who just sit there listening, you cant recall their names. -Teacher- Children in conflict The political violence continues to affect children in the country. Local authorities have been involved in death-squad operations targeting children. There are also reports of children being used by government linked paramilitaries and armed opposition. Children, sometimes as young as 11 years old, have been recruited by armed rebel movements, such as the New Peoples Army, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and the Abu Sayyaf Group, to serve as combatants, spies, guards, cooks or medics. check to 2005 estimates, up to 13 per cent of the armed group MILFs 10,000 members were children. According to existing studies, usually males between the ages of 11 and 17 who have low educational attainment, mostly reaching only the elementary level. They are usually middle or in-between children in very large low-income families. Various studies have estab lished that many of these children are either on the streets or of the streets when they were apprehended.While a signi?cant number still live with parents or a relative, they are usually out on the streets to eke out a living or are involved in helpmate groups or gangs, which are usually associated with vices and illegal activities. Justice The age of criminal responsibility is 9 years. Despite legislative and procedural safeguards put in place in 2006 with the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act, children in detention are imprisoned in concert with adults in poor detention conditions, increasing the risk of physical or sexual abuse.The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is affright over the increasing reports of cases of child abuse and neglect and the notable deficiencies in domesticated legislation as regards penalizing all forms of abuse, neglect and mis intercession, including sexual abuse. This includes alleged cases of sexual abuse of children in the framework of relig ious institutions. There are also a number of reported cases of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment of children, particularly of children in detention. Many children below the age of 18 are located with adults in detention.References * http//resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/start/countries/philippines * http//www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/111257/news/specialreports/poverty-hunger-prevent-filipino-kids-from-getting-basic-education * http//newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/ adopt/20080705-146662/4M-malnourished-Filipino-children * http//newsinfo.inquirer.net/232299/more-filipino-children-stunted-due-to-malnutritionixzz2YSsYkc6e* http//newsinfo.inquirer.net/topstories/topstories/view/20100204-251263/Over-200000-Filipino-children-are-victims-of-abuse-says-group * http//www.nscb.gov.ph/headlines/StatsSpeak/2011/101011_rav.asp * http//www.crin.org/docs/resources/publications/violence.pdf * http//southasia.oneworld.net/archive/globalheadlines/school-education-faces-worst-eve r-crisis-in-philippines