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Affecting Women and Children in ASEAN: A Baseline Study
Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, !ailand, and Vietnam, as Member States of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), have committed to ensure the enjoyment of human rights by the women and children of their region.1 All Member States are Parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Recently, the ASEAN rea#rmed its commitment to its women and children by establishing the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) and the ASEAN Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Women and Children (ACWC). As AICHR and ACWC begin to identify and implement their programmes, the Human Rights Resource Centre (HRRC), through this Baseline Study, seeks to provide support by giving an overview of the breadth and depth of the available data and literature and the relevance of, and gaps in information. !is Study aims to identify areas where empirical research and data collection are necessary and, thus, provide the basis for a research plan and follow-on studies that can serve as a major knowledge and policy resource for the ACWC, AICHR, civil society organizations, and ASEAN governments. !is Executive Summary represents the distillation of the "ndings and analysis of 10 Country Reports and the Synthesis Report contained in this volume. Our Baseline Study reveals that all ASEAN Member States have enacted laws and have adopted programmes to protect women and children from violence, exploitation, and abuse and discrimination in the context of migration. !ere is considerable variation in national legal frameworks; how far along each has gone in implementation, monitoring, and data collection also varies widely. Our Study details speci"c gaps in data, the countries where migrants usually originate from, it appears that, as in the case of Myanmar, tight restrictions on movement and access to information may have increased young people’s vulnerability to exploitation. On the other hand, as was noted in Vietnam and Cambodia, encouraging the unemployed to seek work opportunities abroad without providing adequate safeguards creates opportunities for tra#cking. In general, strengthening the migration policy frameworks of the ASEAN countries was recommended in order to e$ectively protect against exploitation. Pertaining particularly to child soldiers, gaps in the legal system penalizing child soldiers were indicated in !ailand and the Philippines. In !ailand, neither the Penal Code nor the Child Protection Act explicitly criminalises the recruitment of children under the age of 18.8 In the Philippines, the lack of prosecution of perpetrators of recruitment of child soldiers was partly attributed to the “ambiguity of Republic Act 7610, article 10, Sec.22 (b) prohibiting the recruitment of children.”9 A bill now pending before the Philippine Senate aims to give better protectio
KP.VIII.1 000151 | KP.VIII.1 COH a | My Library | Available |
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