Elevating Asian Girl Human Rights Panel (6 of 6) Speaker: Rowena Legaspi

Advancing Girl Children’s Access
to Reproductive Health in the
Context of Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights
A Presentation by:
Rowena Legaspi-Medina
Executive Director, Children’s Legal Rights and Development Center, Inc., Philippines
NGO – UN CSW Parallel Event, March 11, 2014
Hardin Room, UN CC Building, 43rd Avenue, NYC, New York

Introduction
✹ Children’s Legal Rights and Development
Center (CLRDC) is a non-profit, non-stock
human rights organization committed to
advancing the rights, interests, and welfare of
children victims of violence with particular
focus on children sexually abuse (CSA) as well
as children in conflict with the law (CICL),
through direct legal intervention and
psychosocial intervention programs.

✹ CLRDC is based in the Philippines and is
currently the Secretariat of Children’s Legal
Advocacy Network (CLAN), a coalition of
sixteen NGOs that is directly engaged in the
promotion of children’s rights and welfare
through education and advocacy.
✹ CLRDC also heads the Child Rights
Defenders Forum, a loose network of
children’s rights advocates (of more than
thirty five membership around the
Philippines).

The Philippines
✹ a sovereign state in South east Asia, with a
total of 7,107 islands and a total land area of
300,000 square kilometers.

✹
✹ As regards the current population, the
Philippines ranks in the top 20 most
populated countries with the total number of
99,231,982 population according to the
Philippines National Statistics Office.

Contextual framework on
Reproductive Health (RH) rights
✹ Right to decide, when and how to have
children within the context of social,
economic, political and cultural conditions
and orientation
✹ Right to have control over and decide
freely and responsibly on matters related
to their sexuality, free of discrimination,
coercion and violence (ICPD Cairo, Egypt)

Reproductive Health: ICPD
✹ Refers to the wellbeing - - physical, mental
and social aspect in relation to the
reproductive health system and its processes
✹ Failure to observe and respect the exercise of
one’s RH is therefore a human rights violation

Human Rights Issues involved
in the exercise of RH rights
✹ The Right to Health Care, including
reproductive health care and family planning.
✹ Rights and access to information.
✹ Right to Privacy.
✹ Right to freedom of speech.
✹ Right to self determination.
✹ Equal Right before the law.
✹ Violence against women and children

Reproductive Health rights in the
Philippines: Issues at a glance
✹ Access to Reproductive Health Care
✹ Child Mortality
✹ Contraception
✹ Poor Education
✹ Unsafe Abortion
✹ Violence Against Women
✹ HIV/AIDS

Girl Children access to RH rights
✹ By definition of girl, in the Philippines we
follow the definition of minority age of
girls and boys under the UN CRC,
which is below 18.

Access to Reproductive Health
rights; the Philippine situation
By the lack of access to RH rights, girl children
who have been uneducated and un-informed
about her rights often become the victims of
numerous health rights violations;
✹ Maternal death rate is 200 per 100,000 death.
✹ 5.6% of pregnant women, no pre-natal care

✹ 12% of all deaths related to pregnancy
were due to abortion.
✹ Over 1,000 women have illegal and
unsafe abortions everyday.
✹ Every hour, 46 unsafe induced
abortions are performed in the
Philippines.
✹ Unintended pregnancy rates increased
from 68 in 1994 to 2000 in year 2007.

Child Mortality
✹ Infant mortality rate per 1,000 live births
is 29 according to the National Statistics
Office.
✹ Estimates of induced abortions among
adolescents (girl children) reached
319,000 in year 2000 and could
approximate to 400,000 by 2015.

Contraception
✹ Access to modern contraception in the
Philippines were banned through local
policies in Laguna, Puerto Princesa and
Manila, - which resulted in higher rate of
pregnancy and unsafe abortions in
these areas.

Access to education and information
on RH
✹ Due to misconceptions, pre-marital sex
rose to 23% in 2012 from 20% in 2000.
✹ 51% of pregnant women were not
informed about the danger signs of
pregnancy.
✹ One in every 6 adolescent pregnancies
end up in illegal abortion because of
lack of awareness on reproductive
health rights.

HIV and STD
✹ HIV/AIDS prevalent among 15-24 years old
pregnant women.
✹ The latest HIV/AIDS registry in 2012 shows a
total of 4,499.
✹ Ages 18-29 – largest group of women
infected with HIV. The male age group is
between the ages of 20-39.
✹ The youngest 15, male
✹ Young women are vulnerable to HIV – no
access to information about protection.

Violence Against Women or VAW
✹ Rape is still rampant despite the enactment of
Anti-Rape Law of 1997;
✹ Trafficked women and children in year for
forced prostitution, reached up to 1000,000 in
2012.
✹ PNP documented 12,204 cases of VAW in
2010, a seven-fold times increase from 1,100
cases in 1996. Cases included physical
injuries, and rape.

Unsafe Abortion
✹ Abortion rate was 27 per 1,000 women
aged 15 – 44.
✹ Abortion ratio was 18 induced abortions
per 100 pregnancies.
✹ Complications associated with unsafe
abortion were the 3rd leading cause of
hospital admissions.

Challenges in Elevating Girl Children
Issues to Human Rights in the
Context of RH rights

✹ Lack of Knowledge and Information on RH
rights as a human rights issue
✹ Lack of access to affordable and quality
health care services
✹ Political positions of leaders hampers the
implementation of RH law in the
Philippines
✹ RH is not seen as a core issues, much
less as the commonly understood
statement of women’s human rights issue

How are human rights of women
Protected, Promoted, Defended
and Fulfilled?
Principle of State Complicity

SOURCES OF RIGHTS
✹ International Documents
✹ Constitution
✹ Jurisprudence
✹ Statutes and Laws
✹ Ordinances
✹ Codes
✹ PD’s, EO’s, RA’s,

THE PHILIPPINE LEGAL SYSTEM
✹ Not indigenous: borrowed from US, Spain
✹ Founded on laws which are rules of human
conduct, just and obligatory, to which the
greater body of inhabitants render habitual
obedience
✹ Criminal and Civil
✹ Punitive, Regulatory, Preventive and
Rehabilitative Nature

GENDER EQUITY IN THE PHILIPPINE
LEGAL SYSTEM
✹ Are there laws which deal with all issues
relating to women?
✹ If there are, whether these laws discriminate
against women and rely merely on male-
defined assumptions?
✹ Are they faithful to the concepts of neutrality
and equality?

Women and the Philippines Law
✹ The “othering process” – women’s issues
are considered other issues, the
miscellaneous
✹ Construction and/or definition of legal
rules according to the generic male
standard
✹ Women being considered as a deviation
from the norm
✹ Construction of women and their
sexuality from the male point of view
✹ Trivialization in law of women’s
concerns, issues and activities

Examples of double standard laws
✹ Higher penalty for penis-to-vagina rape
✹ “good father of the family”
✹ Adultery vs. concubinage
✹ Family code: Supremacy of the father’s rule
✹ Women as chattels
✹ Good woman and bad woman prototypes
✹ Trivial: support, violence, sexual harassment,
prostitution, trafficking, etc.

Example of Jurisprudence
✹ “A rape victim’s failure to escape from or plead
with her rapists could only mean that she gave
her full consent, and that she prostituted
herself.” People vs, Navales, 102 SCRA 86
(1981)

Filling in the Gaps
Towards elevating the women and
girl children rights to Human
Rights

STATE OBLIGATIONS
✹ Obligation to RESPECT
✹ Obligation to PROTECT
✹ Obligation to ENSURE AND ENFORCE
✹ Obligation to PROMOTE

All human beings are born free
and equal in dignity and rights
ARTICLE 1 – UDHR, 1948

PHILIPPINE COMMITMENT
✹ RA 7877, Anti-Sexual Harassment Act of
1995
✹ RA 8353, Anti-Rape Law of 1998
✹ RA 7192, Women in Nation-Building Act
✹ Executive Order No. 273 (Philippine Plan
for Gender Responsive Development, 1995-
2025)
✹ RA 8369, Family Courts Act
✹ RA 9208, Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act
✹ RA 9262, Anti-Violence Against Women
and Their Children Act of 2004

RH Law enacted in 2013
✹ This law after its passage in 2013 was
immediately legally challenged by some
groups
✹ Its current implementation was
suspended by the Supreme Court in its
decision last September 2013

Still a way ahead…
✹ There is still NO law that defines discrimination,
encompassing both direct and indirect, in
national legislation
✹ No revisions have been made to the
discriminatory provisions in national laws and
NO legal framework pertaining to gender
equality and women’s human rights
✹ No institutional authority to effectively support
gender mainstreaming in all sectors (i.e.
government and education)

Walking the Talk…
✹ Intensify awareness raising and public
educational campaigns in view of eliminating
stereotypes
✹ Review macroeconomic policies and their
impact on women
✹ There has to be sexuality education for boys
and girls with special attention to prevention of
early pregnancies and STI’s
✹ Absence of a comprehensive framework to
promote and protect reproductive health rights

Elevating Asian Girl Human Rights Panel (6 of 6) Speaker: Rowena Legaspi

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Elevating Asian Girl Human Rights Panel (6 of 6) Speaker: Rowena Legaspi