ABSTRACT
The Philippines is party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (‘CRC’) and is therefore legally bound to protect children and provide safeguards for their well-being. In 2016, after more than a decade of advocacy, the Philippines enacted legislation to establish a comprehensive juvenile justice and welfare system. With this law now in effect, children in the Philippines are, ostensibly, the beneficiaries of an array of mechanisms designed to identify and safeguard their rights and best interests. Yet, abuse, degradation, and neglect remain endemic in the Philippines, and the risks of violence against children continue to deepen in the context of the current war on drugs. Analysing the contemporary socio-political context in the Philippines, this chapter identifies that despite the State obligation to uphold children’s rights, the lives of Filipino children, and particularly the poor and marginalised, are impaired by a range of punitive policies and practices that are currently either formally or tacitly sanctioned by the State (Kim et al. 2017). Among these is the risk that the minimum age of criminal responsibility be lowered, a measure that would place additional children at risk of violence.
