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The Philippines
Barriers to child protection
and participation
• World Vision Development Foundation in
the Philippines is involved in some exciting,
innovative and effective work to promote
the protection of children. Challenges
remain, however, in the areas of
documenting its impact and content,
weighing its impact over time, extending
good practice to other areas, gaining
financial support for innovative work, and
building capacity of local staff and
counterparts. 10
• Traditional notions of the role of children in
society mean that there is reluctance in
some families to “listen” to their children,
in the belief that this may result in a lack of
respect for elders. This is consistent with
views expressed in Sri Lanka and
Cambodia. Activities that sensitise families
to child participation may assist in this, as
has been the case in those two countries.
• Agencies need to be responsive to issues
that emerge as affecting children in the
community, which may warrant advocacy.
However, conflicting priorities arise when
this is not the main focus of their work.
Linking with established networks helps,
but increasing staff capacity and resources
is the best way to ensure that staff do not
take on excessive workloads, or place
themselves at risk, out of commitment to
tackling advocacy issues.
• Instability and lack of peace and order in
areas of the country can hinder activities
and engender discouragement, apathy or
intimidation.
• Political will is needed to back policy
change with practical implementation.
Legislation and policy is a cornerstone for a
comprehensive response to child
protection, however without the resources
or political will to implement it, it makes
little difference to children. Inadequate
resource allocation to stated priority areas
gives a negative message about the
authority’s actual commitment to children.
Bohol province has the policy, which has
been an exercise in political will. It is
unclear if the necessary resourcing will
follow. While this study’s coordinator was
in Bohol, for example, a meeting with the
Department of Labour revealed problems
of under-resourced provincial government
authorities, given the scope of their task.
As a department, they lacked an estimated
US$2000 to undertake a baseline survey to
identify incidence of child labour in
industry. Lack of a baseline makes it difficult
to measure impact. Greater public
awareness has been generated through
information campaigns, however lack of
resources means that cases of child abuse
reported are not always being acted upon.
10 Muntarbhorn, V, 1997
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