The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) once again raised its call to eliminate all forms of child violence, specifically child pornography and online sexual exploitation, during the 3rd International Dialogue on Human Trafficking held at the New World Hotel Makati on  September 14.

The Department is the chair of the Inter-Agency Council Against Child Pornography (IACACP), and through DSWD Assistant Secretary Lorraine Marie T. Badoy, it  raised concerns about the horrific effects of online trafficking and exploitation on Filipino children.

“Borders have blurred so that heinous crimes can be committed while a pornographer sits in the anonymity of his dark basement halfway across the world. All the perpetrator has to do is enter a chat room, chat up his prey using a false name, pay with a prepaid credit card where there is no way his real identity can be traced, and then the abuse begins,” she said.

She also expressed her concern over how Filipino children are being trafficked by their own parents. Parents make their children highly vulnerable to  online exploitation while believing that it has no grave effects on the children since there was no physical contact involved.

“The tragedy to all these is how in many cases it is the parents who offer their children to clients. The underlying and deadly misconception is how it online pornography  is harmless because  there is no physical contact involved. What should be emphasized is how very real the damage is. In many cases, children are not physically harmed, but they suffer psychological harm which if not properly addressed may damage them for life,” the Assistant Secretary explained.

Asec. Badoy  called for the strong implementation of Republic Act (RA) No. 9775 or the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009 to stop child pornography through the installation of software that filters or blocks the access of sites with child pornographic contents and the need for increased child protection services for victims of human trafficking, pornography and exploitation.

She also lauded the Technical Working Group on Online Sexual Exploitation of Children of the Manila Dialogue which has taken measures to address this threat including the  development of the National Response Plan to Prevent and Address Online Sexual Exploitation and Abuse of Children led by the Inter-Agency Council Against Child Pornography and the National Strategic Plan of the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking with focus on addressing Online Child Sexual Exploitation.

Finally, she emphasized, “Our collective goal should be to ensure the creation of a world where none of this back and forth exchange between government agencies and the corporate world is necessary  because on their own, companies and institutions will self-regulate and establish much needed safeguards on their own volition — not because they’ve been reprimanded but just because it is the right thing to do by our children. We need to create a society and world where our children can freely be the children they ought to be and have the childhood that is their birthright.” #