Further data needed for sexploitation cases in CAR

THE Department of Health-Cordillera (DOH-CAR) through the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center (BGHMC) is in the process of coordinating with other government agencies involved in the protection of women and children against abuses to come up with a consistent data gathering system.

Doctor Elizabeth Batino, Women and Children’s Protection (WCP) specialist of BGHMC, said in cases of child sexploitation, there is a need to come up with an accurate data needed to determine how to come up with measures to combat such activities aside from encouraging the public to inform law enforcement agencies of such crimes.

“We have our own recording wherein we segregate children from adults. We segregate the different types of abuse, and we report this to DOH. We have Violence Against Women and Children Registry System, we use to report this also to the DSWD and we also report our statistics to our hospital and the Child Protection Network,” Batino said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations International Children’s Educational Fund (Unicef) in a qualitative and quantitative study identified Benguet and Mountain Province as areas where child sexploitation cases through the use of the internet and social media have been recorded.

“In terms of their sources, probably they got it from the DSWD. One problem that we have encountered is even if there maybe cases of child sexploitation that are not being reported, one of the issues there is that we should come up with a baseline on where should the data come from because our data varies from the Police and the DSWD, so hopefully we can come out with one system,” Batino, a women and child specialist added.

Aside from the difference in data, a difference in the way agencies gather criteria and what is reported maybe considered.

The common abuses being recorded by the WCP were identified to be sexual abuse physical abuse related to the use of drugs but not trafficking.

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