One of the reasons that I write so often about the concerns of children is because their vulnerability is compounded by their invisibility. They have historically been disregarded or exploited, just as any other vulnerable group would be at the hands of the ruthless and powerful. Children are among the most vulnerable groups because the power that protects them usually comes from outside of themselves. It is adults that enact legislation and who control the organs of the State, it is adults that are entitled to hold and control the resources needed to protect them, it is adults who vote and hold other adults in public office accountable. The leverage that other vulnerable groups may exercise – voting, boycotts, immigration – are simply unavailable to children that the law does not recognize as having full legal capacities.
That means that the onus and responsibility for their protection lie solely with us adults. And as World Day for the Prevention of and Healing from Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Violence comes on Nov. 18, it is a good time to reflect on what we can do and the huge task ahead.
Children today are faced with the threat of harm from both tradition and modernity, in all spaces from the real to the virtual. To protect children we must meet them where they are, where the threats to their welfare can be found – at home, in school, on the internet, even in youth detention centers.
In the home, corporal punishment remains a concern, even if studies have consistently shown how this ‘traditional’ practice harms rather than helps the development of our youth. As I wrote before, such violence inflicted on kids has worsened their relationships with parents, and may cause mental health problems, greater aggression, greater antisocial behaviors, lower cognitive ability and lower self-esteem. Even in the short term, there is evidence that corporal punishment is not actually any more effective at forcing compliance than other methods, such as the use of a barrier/time-out room.
A report from UNICEF stated that as of 2022, three in five children – or nearly 60 percent of one- to 14-year-olds in the Philippines – experienced at least one form of ‘violent discipline.’ Furthermore, 11.6 million children, or more than 50 percent of this age group, reported experiencing physical aggression; 9.1 million, or 39 percent, were subjected to physical punishment; while nearly 800,000, or 3.4 percent, suffered ‘severe’ physical punishment. The UNICEF report also included alarming figures for child labor (828,000) and child marriage (460,000).
At school, where there is already great difficulty in equipping our children with fundamental knowledge, we have not devoted enough resources to arming them with the proper understanding of consent, power structures and the means to identify manipulative techniques that lead to abusive relationships.
While sex education is an essential part of protecting children, there must also be a renewed focus on the social aspects of relationships, to allow our youth to critique outmoded gendered expectations and recognize manipulative behaviors. We need to speak more freely to our children about sexual pressure and coercion, about manipulative behavior and emotional blackmail. We have to build upon the simplicity of ‘No Means No’ and teach children the ways unscrupulous individuals will use to make them say ‘yes’ to something they do not want. We have to reinforce that ‘consent’ acquired through manipulation or coercion is not consent at all.
On top of these longstanding threats, a slew of new ones have appeared with the advent of modern technologies. I have written before about how online sexual abuse and exploitation of children (OSAEC) has spread, and how it can be incredibly difficult to discover, investigate and properly prosecute. The first Scale of Harm study, conducted by the International Justice Mission and released in 2022, dealt with the extent of the selling of livestreams, images and videos of child sexual abuse in the Philippines, and revealed that close to half a million Filipino children were trafficked to produce new child sexual exploitation material that year.
Another looming online threat comes with the expanded capabilities of so-called generative AI in recent years, alongside other emergent technologies. Organizations such as the Council of Europe have already issued warnings about the capability of such technologies to facilitate online abuse of children and create harmful content – we have already seen on social media how AI can be used to falsify videos that feature facsimiles of real people, and this can include children. While there is potential in the use of AI in the automated prevention of online distribution of exploitative content, the more immediate threat is its unrestricted use to impersonate and harm. It is no longer within the realm of science fiction for bad faith actors to use a video of a parent or the voice of a friend to lead the unwary astray.
In the face of such diverse threats and needs, it is imperative that our country commit to a multidisciplinary, whole-of-nation approach to stopping violence against children. The legal framework should be made robust, and there should be a renewed push for the enactment of stronger and updated laws that would protect the rights of children and punish offenders. We should also push for the passage of laws that promote children’s welfare such as those concerning corporal punishment. Schools must be given the training and support necessary to have programs ready to teach children not only about sex but about consent and coercion, and the red flags of abusive relationships.
The Anti-OSAEC and Anti-Child Sexual Abuse or Exploitation Materials (CSAEM) law should be strictly enforced and internet intermediaries, particularly social media networks and those that traffic in generative AI, should be able to produce tangible safeguards for children – as both potential users and potential subjects – before their products can be made available (or continue to be available) to the public. Internet intermediaries should be compelled to install measures designed to prevent, detect, respond to or report OSAEC.
This battle must be fought on many fronts, with the commitment of resources to match. But our children cannot defend themselves from these threats – it falls on us to give them the protection they are entitled to, and the future that they deserve.