Action against child labour in the Philippines is within the framework of the country's Philippine Plan of Action on Children (PPAC), which was formulated in 1992.  The Philippine-ILO Indicative Framework on Child Labour (1994) focussed on children in hazardous work. These two policy documents will be revised in the future in order to mainstream child labour concerns at national level.

The Philippines' Bicameral Congress has given attention to protective legislation for working children. This is reflected in recently passed legislation and a number of pending bills at the Upper House (the Senate) and the Lower House (the House of Representatives). Congress passed the R.A. 8369, "Child and Family Courts Act", which established special courts to deal with criminal and civil cases involving children and/or their families. This reform provides protection to child victims. Pending at the Senate Committee on Labour and Employment are six bills on child labour, covering child labour in hazardous work, international trade relations, parental responsibilities and accountabilities, and overseas employment of minors. These bills were discussed during the 7th session of Congress on 25 July 1997.  At the House of Representatives, there are three legislative initiatives under discussion. The first is House Resolution No. 950, which calls for a congressional oversight investigation in aid of legislation and the implementation of the "Republic Act No. 7610". This is known as the "Special Protection of Children Against Child Abuse, Exploitation and Discrimination Act ". The second resolution calls for the creation of a post of "Ombudsman for Children". The third initiative is a House Bill proposing revisions to the landmark child protection laws R.A. 7610 and 7658.  Another House Resolution (1047) was filed in January 1997 asking for an investigation and in aid of further legislation over the apparent "alarming increase in the incidence of child labour in the Philippines".

In order to strengthen the enforcement of the law, President Fidel V. Ramos issued Executive Order No. 275 that created the "Special Committee for the Protection of Children" in February 1996. This Order aimed to consolidate the assessment, monitoring and implementation of the State policy of protecting children from all forms of neglect, abuse, cruelty, exploitation and discrimination, and other conditions prejudicial to their development.  Under the supervision of this Committee is the Task Force on Child Protection of the Department of Justice.  In 1996, the Task Force handled 28 cases related to child abuse, exploitation and discrimination and there were 14 cases of child prostitution and child labour.

Progress is also being made in the field of the labour inspectorate. In February 1997, the Department of Labour and Employment issued Administrative Order No. 47 directing its labour inspectors to give priority to the inspection of establishments employing child labour and women workers in security agencies, construction, shipping sectors and other establishments classified as hazardous or high risk areas.  An important breakthrough in the development of governmental guidelines on child labour is the current revision of the definition of hazardous work for children and young workers below 18 years. The Department of Labour and Employment is finalizing, for approval by a Tripartite Council, a revised list of hazardous undertakings for young workers. This will replace the original list of hazardous occupations for children and young workers promulgated in 1973.

The NCLC has an organizational structure at national and regional level. Members include the Department of Labour and Employment, the Department of Social Welfare and Development, the Department of Education, Culture and Sports, the Department of Interior and Local Government, the Department of Health, the Philippine Information Agency, the Employers' Confederation of the Philippines, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, the Labour Advisory Consultative Council, and the National Council for Social Development, the ILO and UNICEF. In 1997 the NCLC approved new guidelines to accredit additional NGO membership in the Committee. The NCLC has also included the National Statistics Office (NSO) in the committee. This will provide improved access to birth registration records and the NSO will also provide advisory services on child labour statistics to the national child labour programme.

The NCLC is supported by inter-agency technical working groups. The Child Labour Project Management Team of the Ministry of Labour and Employment serves as the NCLC secretariat. The Team is responsible for reviewing work and financial plans of participating agencies and the monitoring of their progress. It also serves as an important resource centre in the advocacy, social mobilization and alliance-building activities of the partners.

From the start, the Philippine IPEC Programme has kept its focus on the priority groups of children identified in the Philippine-ILO Indicative Framework for Action adopted in 1994. The priority target groups are: child victims of trafficking, children in mining and quarrying, children in home-based enterprises, children trapped in prostitution, children in domestic service, children in deep sea diving and fishing, and children in commercial plantation agriculture, including sugar and vegetable production. IPEC's priorities are outlined in a seven-point plan for action:

• High priority for the mainstreaming of child labour and child protection concerns into policy measures at national, regional and provincial levels.
• Development of national media and advocacy campaigns.
• Formulation of a legislative agenda, including the ratification and application of relevant ILO child labour Conventions.
• Expansion of direct action programmes towards the prevention and elimination of child labour in hazardous and exploitative work and the immediate protection of working children through removal, rehabilitation and recovery services, as well as the provision of protective education and health services.
• Broadening of the social alliance.
• Professional and technical capacity building.
• Promotion of strengthened management and coordination of child labour programmes.

In improving the knowledge base, IPEC supported the National Statistics Office with the National Survey on Working Children, the first comprehensive database on child labour in the Philippines. The results were presented in a national seminar and disseminated to regions with a high incidence of child labour. Law enforcement initiatives were carried out.  These took the form of a compilation, dissemination and review of national law and regulations.  The development of new guidelines on hazardous work and the increased emphasis on child labour inspections in the informal sector are on the way.

Thirty-six action programmes and 19 mini programmes were implemented during the period.  Half of these involve direct action with working children and their communities.  The direct action programmes combine preventive, protective and rehabilitative measures.  Nation-wide programmes on trafficking and child domestic service were launched as well as community level demonstration programmes in different parts of the country with priority to communities with a high incidence of hazardous and exploitative child labour.  The implementing organizations are operationally linked to the decentralized Regional Committees on Child Labour.  These Committees, in turn, report to the National Child Labour Committee.

In addition to community awareness-raising activities at the local level, IPEC, with private corporate support, initiated a national media campaign on child labour, involving the print media, television and radio, reinforcing other social mobilization programmes.

During 1996-97 a broad alliance of ILO's tripartite partners, NGOs and civil society emerged.  Employers became involved in four broad areas: (i) reviewing current company policies regarding the hire and use of child labour, especially under sub-contracting arrangements; (ii) developing company and industry codes of conduct; (iii) providing community services to priority groups of working children; (iv) and advocating tripartite bodies for action on child labour. In a clear gesture of support to the campaign, the Employer Confederation of the Philippines invited the ILO's Assistant Director General for Asia and the Pacific to address the 18th National Conference of Employers on the subject of child labour.  The Bishops'-Businessmen's Conference for Human Development (BBC), a collaborative association of the country's influential business persons and the bishops of the Catholic Church of the Philippines, have also started activities on child labour in 1997. The country's trade unions have actively expanded their contribution by developing union policies and frameworks for action; providing direct services to child workers and their families; and carrying out workers' education and solidarity activities in the national and global movements against child labour. Child labour focal points have been established both in the employers' federations and trade union organizations.

NGOs have formed a coalition which engages in cooperative action among NGOs and with the Government, employer's and workers' organizations. These collaborative efforts have led to the partial specialization of action in key areas such as advocacy for law and policy reform, para-legal education, social mobilization and awareness raising. The collaboration of partners has been significant in several joint endeavours, such as the planning and preparation of the 1997 international conferences on child labour, the lobbying for the ratification of ILO convention 138 and the celebrations of the national Children's Month.

IPEC's capacity building efforts centre on a continuous training of programme implementors.  Basic training on the design, management and evaluation of child labour programmes has taken place both at national and district level.  During 1996-1997 more than a hundred programme implementors underwent training and selected participants then participated in training of trainers' programmes. This has resulted in a pool of sixteen national trainers who conduct training at district level. Other training programmes such as para-legal education and general orientation courses have been organized for the programme partners. Four hundred para-legals from different governmental, non- governmental and peoples' organizations also serve as resource persons in community level awareness raising activities.  IPEC further supported specialized training for the labour inspectorate, who, on their own initiative, oriented their colleagues on child labour. In order to sustain the commitment and interest of the implementors and their organizations, IPEC has held regular partners' meetings to share information and experiences and chart the progress of individual organizations.  These regular fora have facilitated the networking among the partner organizations and collaborative action.  In addition, IPEC has published research studies to raise the technical capacity of programme implementors.

Due to the increasing international attention on child labour, the UN and other international organizations have increased their activities and interest on child labour issues.  In the Philippines, UNICEF has been supporting child labour interventions since 1988. Other international organizations and international trade union secretariats have started child labour programmes, including the International Save the Children Alliance, the Asian American Free Labour Institute and the International Textile, Leather and Garments Workers Federation.

Given the diverse and wide ranging action over the past two years it will be important to undertake a systematic evaluation of interventions to draw lessons learned from the experiments and to use this knowledge for more strategic interventions in the next biennium. These thematic evaluations will spring from an on-going policy and programme review, to be completed in late 1997. The thematic evaluations will revolve around education, law enforcement, community-based programmes, policy and research, and direct action with priority groups of children.

The initial experience of direct action programmes at the community level has been promising. In 1998-99 IPEC will select 10- 15 communities in order to concentrate resources in consolidating and integrating community-based approaches in prevention, protection, withdrawal and rehabilitation. The interventions will centre on community accountability and responsibility; family protection; provision of economic and income alternatives; access to scholarships, educational and vocational training; and other social services for children. The community programmes will be jointly planned and implemented as collaborative initiatives of various IPEC partners and will include a community-based monitoring and evaluation system.

Community organization and governance aim at preparing communities to assume a greater responsibility in action to prevent child labour. This will likely lead to either the creation, or the revision of local coordination and management mechanisms, in the form of community councils or the formation of local organizations which have the responsibility for unifying intervention in the case of children in hazardous child labour situations. These councils will be helped, not only in setting up and maintaining programmes for working children but also in mobilizing national and local resources to sustain these programmes. Family protection consists of awareness raising and mobilization of families in the protection of children. Modules on family protection of children will be standardized for wider dissemination, where possible. Economic alternatives will provide opportunities for child workers and their families to augment family incomes through livelihood interventions. Educational support will be in the form of scholarships, transitional classes, vocational training opportunities and, where appropriate, sheltered and protected workplaces. The selected communities will also be encouraged to undertake child-focused and child-centred activities that directly address the immediate needs of working children for health, safety, and recreation. Community rehabilitation and recovery interventions, which have been tested in one or two areas, will be replicated in other communities with different target groups of children. Social mobilization and awareness raising activities will emphasize new activities for teachers and students and educational organizations. Special modules for students in the elementary and high school levels will be prepared to achieve more caring school environments for working children as well as to motivate working children to remain in school.

While the 1998-99 biennium will consolidate action at the local community level, nation-wide action on priority groups of children will remain important. This is especially relevant in cross-regional interventions for children in domestic service and child victims of trafficking. At the national level, further action is needed to highlight the problem of growing numbers of children who are leaving home for work and the presence of recruiters of child workers. For young domestic workers, advocacy at the national level continues to be essential in order to stimulate urgent attention to the risks and vulnerability of young female workers who are engaged in this form of work. Efforts to raise awareness at the local level will be linked with national media campaigns to create greater impact.

Institutionalization of capacity building will continue with the training of child labour programme implementors, advocates and other interested organizations, on the National Policy on Child Labour and Strategies for Action. The training for programme implementors and labour inspectors will be accelerated at local level outside the city of Manila. The national trainers' pool will be increased to reach a critical mass of at least 40 trainers on child labour.

Strengthening the present alliances is essential to overcome organizational weaknesses and difficulties among partner organizations. In order to sustain initiatives against child labour, joint action as well as participatory planning and evaluation will be pursued. Government and NGO collaboration on various projects will also be further encouraged. The efforts towards institutionalization will also require accurate documentation of the various child labour programmes and the effective sharing of experiences and lessons learned from these programmes. It is expected that the number of employers' and workers' organizations participating in the child labour programme will increase.

The expansion of partners and the multi-sectoral approaches on the child labour issue pose a challenge to manage and coordinate the child labour programme. In recent years, responsibility for the management of the programme has moved from the Institute for Labour Studies to the Bureau of Women and Young Workers, in the Department of Labour. A new action programme was approved in the second half of 1997, to strengthen the Child Labour Project Management Team of the Bureau of Women and Young Workers. Since the Child Labour Project Management Team acts as the secretariat for both UNICEF and ILO-IPEC activities, coordination between both UN organizations will be strengthened.

In 1998-99, ILO-IPEC will make efforts to incorporate mainstream child labour concerns into the implementation and up-date of the 1992 Philippine Plan of Action for Children (PPAC) and the Social Reform Agenda (SRA), the Philippines' largest poverty alleviation programme. The PPAC will be reviewed and reassessed by the year 2000. Its reformulation will bring about a higher priority on child labour problems. The SRA aims to meet the minimum basic needs of the country's poorest provinces through an array of social services. IPEC's 1998-99 support will be given to identifying SRA's areas with the highest incidence of child labour, including those areas where children are subject to high risks of trafficking. In municipalities where coordination mechanisms for child labour programmes have been established, IPEC will support initiatives that help these organizations obtain a greater share of social services and resources to prevent child labour.