BACK to Herod’s time, that is how the 36-year Center for Women’s Resources (CWR) perceives the legislators’ attempt to railroad the lowering of minimum age of criminal responsibility from 15 years old to 12 years old, previously nine years old in the earlier version of the proposal.
The proposed lowering of minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) to 12 years old makes children more defenceless and exposed to abuses from state forces, given the current human rights situation where women and children are subjected to various forms of state-perpetrated attacks.
Even with the current minimum age of criminal responsibility of 15 years old, more than 26,000 children have been tagged as ‘drug surrenderees’ and have been treated like ordinary adult criminals. More than 70 minors have been killed during drug operations.
In the countryside, more than half a million, majority of whom are women and children, have been forced to evacuate because of militarization since July 2016. Worse, at such a young age, they are subjected to trauma, red-tagging, harassment, and even killings.
CWR likens such attack against children during King Herod of Judea, who ordered the slaying of infants of Bethlehem. Evidently, the Philippine government steps backward than going forward on how to look at the country’s Salinlahi or future generation.
Lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility is not the answer to curb crime or to discipline the poor Filipino children. Because the age of criminality is not the problem. It is the mere effect of the country’s governance.
Instead of alleviating poverty, the government signs the TRAIN law that soars to 6.7 percent the inflation rate. Instead of ensuring a higher budget for education and health, the government invests more on debt servicing, military, and police spending. The combined budget is 20 percent higher than the budget for health and 134 percent higher than the budget allocated for social security, welfare and employment.
Instead of providing regular decent jobs to workers, the government maintains the neoliberal framework of contractual work. Instead of listening to the demands of its people, the government regards such assertion as terrorist attack against the establishment.
Lowering the MACR will only put the lives of more children in danger and will further rob them of the opportunity to have a better future. Lowering MACR is not only morally faulty but is also a violation of existing laws and treaties on children’s rights. As a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN CRC), the Philippine government has the obligation ‘to ensure that children grow up in a safe environment protected from crime and violence.
As long as the fundamentals of food, jobs, and equitable distribution of wealth are not answered appropriately and correctly, crimes--committed by all ages--will persist. - CENTER FOR WOMEN’S RESOURCES