Philippines: Submission to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child

Human Rights Watch welcomes the opportunity to provide input to the Committee on the Rights of the Child (the “Committee”) ahead of its upcoming review of the Philippines. This submission highlights areas of concern that Human Rights Watch hopes will inform the Committee’s consideration of the Philippine government’s compliance with its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). It proposes issues and questions that Committee members may wish to raise with the government of the Philippines. This submission includes information on the shackling of people with psychosocial disabilities and protection of education from attack during armed conflict.

Shackling of Children with Psychosocial Disabilities (articles 23, 24, 27)

In October 2020 Human Rights published a report, Living in Chains: Shackling of People with Psychosocial Disabilities Worldwide, documenting the practice of shackling of people with psychosocial disabilities (mental health conditions), including children, in 60 countries around the world, including in the Philippines.[1] The report found that globally hundreds of thousands of people – including children as young as 10—with psychosocial disabilities have been shackled—chained or locked in confined spaces—at least once in their lives.[2] Many are held in overcrowded, filthy rooms, sheds, cages, or animal shelters and are forced to eat, sleep, urinate, and defecate in the same tiny area. The inhumane practice of shackling exists due to inadequate support and mental health services as well as widespread beliefs that stigmatize people with psychosocial disabilities. Shackling often occurs in homes because there are no services available in the community and families who struggle to cope with the demands of caring for a relative with a psychosocial disability may feel they have no choice but to shackle them. The time periods range from days and weeks, to months, and even years.

The nature of shackling means that people live in very restrictive conditions that reduce their ability to stand or move at all.[3] People who are shackled to one another are often forced to go to the toilet and sleep together. Shackling impacts a person’s mental as well as physical health. A shackled child can be affected by post-traumatic stress, malnutrition, infections, nerve damage, muscular atrophy, and cardio-vascular problems.

The former UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Méndez, has explicitly noted that shackling “unequivocally amount[s] to torture even if committed by non-State actors under conditions in which the State knows or ought to know about them.”[4]

Human Rights Watch has learned from nongovernment organizations that, particularly in remote provinces in the Philippines, the shackling or arbitrary detention of people, including children, with psychosocial disabilities is not uncommon, mainly because of poverty and lack of access to services.

Media in the Philippines have reported several cases of shackling over the years, depicting children with psychosocial disabilities in severe or dire conditions. In one case in 2021, in General Santos City in the southern Philippines, twin boys, 15, were shown naked while crawling through mud and in chains.[5] In another 2021 case, in Minglanila town, in the central Philippine province of Cebu, an 11-year-old girl was shown in a video chained to her bed. The report said she has been chained for the last eight years.[6]

Human Rights Watch encourages the Committee to ask the Philippine government:

• Is there official data on the number of children who are currently shackled or have been subjected to shackling in the Philippines?
• What steps has the government taken to eliminate the practice of shackling of children with psychosocial disabilities?
• What steps has the government taken to develop adequate, quality, and voluntary community-based support and mental health services for children with psychosocial disabilities?

Human Rights Watch asks the Committee to consider including the following recommendations in its review of the Philippines:

• Ban shackling in law and in practice.
• Develop a time-bound plan to shift progressively to community-based mental health support. Ensure that children who have been released from state and private institutions have access to child psychologists and specialist support services.

• Comprehensively investigate state and private institutions in which children with mental health conditions live, with the goal of stopping chaining and ending other abuses.
• Create and carry out a deinstitutionalization policy and a time-bound action plan, based on the values of equality, independence, and inclusion for children with disabilities. Preventing institutionalization should be an important part of this plan. The government should include children with disabilities and their representative organizations in developing and carrying out the plan.
• Conduct public information campaigns to raise awareness about psychosocial disabilities and the rights of children with disabilities, especially among alternative mental health service providers and the broader community, in partnership with children and others with lived experiences of psychosocial disability.

Protection of Education from Attack (article 28)

Armed hostilities continued in the Philippines in 2020 and 2021 in Mindanao and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, in the south, and in Negros and the Central Visayas region, in the center of the country. Violence and conflict in the Philippines affected children and hindered access to education.[7] Children from the Indigenous Lumad group were particularly affected; Lumad schools were forcibly closed, by closure orders, permit non-renewal, or destruction by presumed paramilitaries.[8]

In 2020, the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack identified at least two incidents of attacks on schools. On May 26, 2020, 10 members of the Philippine Army and National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, dressed in civilian clothes, reportedly threatened village officials to close a school in Kisante barangay, Cotabato province.[9] On August 26, 2020, around 50 members of a paramilitary group reportedly attacked a Lumad school in Sitio Laburon, Bukidnon province; they knocked down school walls and tore up textbooks.[10]

The UN Secretary-General reported that there were five verified attacks on schools and “protected persons related to schools” in 2021, for which the Armed Forces of the Philippines were responsible for two incidents, the Philippines National Police responsible for two incidents, and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters were responsible for one incident. [11]

The Philippines’ 1992 Special Protection of Children against Abuse, Exploitation and Discrimination Act declares children to be “Zones of Peace” and states “To attain this objective, the following policies shall be observed… public infrastructure such as schools … shall not be utilized for military purposes such as command posts, barracks, detachments, and supply depots.”[12] In 2019, the Special Protection of Children in Situations of Armed Conflict Act made attacks on schools a criminal offense, with potential sentences of between 14 and 20 years, with “attacks on schools” being defined to include “occupation … of schools … or disruption of educational activities.”[13]

In 2022, the UN Secretary-General encouraged governments to endorse the Safe Schools Declaration,[14] an inter-governmental political commitment that provides countries the opportunity to express political support for the protection of students, teachers, and schools during times of armed conflict.[15] As of August 2022, 114 countries have endorsed the Safe Schools Declaration. However, the Philippines has not done so.[16]

Human Rights Watch encourages the Committee to ask the Philippine government:

• How many individuals have been prosecuted for attacks on schools during the reporting period?

Human Rights Watch asks the Committee to consider including the following recommendations in its review of the Philippines:

• Endorse the Safe Schools Declaration, and share with other endorsing countries examples of Philippines’ laws and policies protecting schools from attack and preventing the use of schools for military purposes.