Five barangays in Quezon City will pilot a three-year project to fight online sexual abuse of children.
The five barangays—Commonwealth, Batasan Hills, Marilag, Tatalon and Escopa 2—were selected to implement the WeProtect Project of Plan International.
According to WeProtect child protection specialist Renie Martin, they chose the five barangays not because of the prevalence of cases of online abuse, but because the city government under the administration of Mayor Herbert Bautista has worked diligently to make QC a child-friendly city and has been active in supporting their child protection advocacies in the past.
“The WeProtect project of Global Alliance to end violence against children was hosted by the Prime Minister of UK in 2015 in Abu Dhabi with over 50 countries including the Philippines, through which the model national response plan that became the reference for the project was created,” said Martin.
“The three responses we got from the project are victim capability, societal capability and industry capability,” he added.
According to the data of the Inter-Agency Council against Child Pornography, the Philippines reported 124 reported cases of pornography and online child abuse and exploitation of children ages 2 to 17 in 2014.
The role of IACACP is to oversee the importance of Republic Act 9775: An Act Defining the Crime of Child Pornography, Prescribing Penalties therefor and for other purposes. The overall goal is to eradicate child pornography.
With the three-year WeProtect project, Plan International foresees 15,000 girls, boys, young women and men that is far from the dangers of online sexual exploitation and abuse.