BY FR. SHAY CULLEN
(Continued from Jan. 6, 2023)
POVERTY is a driving force that promotes child abuse. Poverty is the condition of millions of people that survive in a very unequal society where it is estimated that the rich that make up less than .01 percent of the population own 45 percent of the national wealth. The rich are becoming richer. According to financial analyst Frank Knight, the number of super rich in the Philippines will grow by a whopping 36 percent between 2020 and 2025.
The poorer are becoming poorer. According to the Asian Development Bank, 23.7 percent of the Philippine population were living below the national poverty line in 2021.The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) says 20 million hungry Filipinos are below that line representing 18.1 percent of the population of 110 million Filipinos. There are more hungry families than in 2018 when there were 17.65 million below the poverty line.
That PSA poverty line is viewed with much skepticism by experts. The House of Representatives Deputy Speaker Ralph Recto, who is a former senator and former head of the National Economic and Development Authority, said the PSA was using a very low indicator of that poverty line to measure poverty. In fact, the poverty rate is much, much higher, he says. According to the PSA, a household of five people only needs to earn US$1.41 every day to feed themselves. That low dollar amount is equivalent to just PhP82 a day per family. A family of five will need a bare minimum of 500 pesos a day for food to barely survive, that is equivalent to US$8.56. That’s why millions of unemployed Filipinos barely survive in squalid shacks and shanties in slums along the filthy canals.
The crimes of online sexual abuse of children is growing. All the child abusers need is a pre-paid one-hour internet connection and a cheap smart phone to connect their live sex shows to pedophiles. Much more has to be done in cracking the power of the telecommunication corporations (telcos) that allow the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to distribute the online streaming videos of children being sexually abused with impunity. There is powerful software systems that can catch, identify child abuse online and capture it for investigators to identify the source and save the child victims.
However, until recently the telcos hide behind the excuse that they are not allowed to monitor the privacy of customers and that they are not responsible for what passes through their servers. The new law RA11930 otherwise known as Anti-Online Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children (OSAEC) Act classifies them as Internet intermediaries and makes it clear that by law they must “develop, establish and install mechanisms or measures designed to prevent, detect, respond or report violations of this Act. . . ISPs must (2) Install and update programs and software designed to detect sexually explicit activities involving children and ensure that access to or transmittal of such materials will be blocked or filtered.”
This time the law is clear, no more excuses by the telcos and ISPs. They must comply with the law to protect and stop the use of their equipment and services to allow child abuse to thrive. (preda.org)
