COTABATO (UCAN): A year after the end of the conflict in Marawi, in Mindanao, the southern Philippines, over 100,000 children have yet to return to school, according to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Almost half a million people were affected by the five-months of fighting that ensued after extremist gunmen from the Maute Group attacked the city in May last year.
 

OLONGAPO (SE): Two bills have been filed in the lower house of the Philippine congress by the speaker, Feliciano Belmonte, one proposing a change in the law to make children possibly as young as nine- or 12-years-old criminally responsible and the other to reintroduce the death penalty.

“This is draconian and repressive for children and not worthy of the administration of Rodrigo Duterte or the Philippine people,” social commentator, Father Shay Cullen, told the Sunday Examiner on July 15.

COLOMBO (UCAN): The authorities in Sri Lanka are being put under more pressure to act on sexual violence against women and children from all quarters of society with the kidnap of a five-year-old girl in the western part of the island nation on September 11.

On September 18, Mothers and Daughters of Lanka demonstrated in the capital city of Colombo demanding that the authorities implement laws to stop sexual violence against women and girls.