Mindanaotoday.com | Phil. Commission on Women warns: Child marriage is now a crime
By: Uriel Quilinguing
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – One may end up 12 years behind bars and/or pay at P50,000 fine for arranging a marriage involving persons below 18 years old, a Philippine Commission on Women regional official said.
Lawyer Kristine Kay Lazarito-Calingin of PCW-10 issued the warning in a forum at a downtown mall in Cagayan de Oro Monday, March 6, to drumbeat the Women’s Month observance.
After a year of transitory period, Republic Act 11596, a measure that prohibits the practice of child marriage has taken effect, Lazarito-Calingin said, and implementing rules and regulations was released December last year.
This law, she said, has repealed Presidential Decree 1083 or the Code of Muslim Personal Laws which allows marriage “as long as the girl has reached the age of puberty” – which, in some instance, refers to nine-year old girls.
But the PCW-10 gender and development chief specialist admitted generating baseline data on child marriages – in the region and elsewhere in the country – is difficult.
She said they closely work with the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples and the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos so that arranged marriages involving minors could be reported, and those behind these identified.
This, she said, is a challenging task since child marriages do not only happen among IP and Muslim communities as traditionally practiced, but also among Christians and in the urban setting, but kept under wraps.
Lazarito-Calingin said that child marriages are “void ab initio” (with no legal basis from the beginning) and “mass weddings” that local chief executives do not legitimize the union – when either both were below 18 or one either one of them is a minor.
She also pointed out that the prohibitions of R.A. 11596 include those – below 18 years old or one of them is a minor – who have been living together (co-habitation) as husband and wife.
This, she said, is covered by a report from the Commission on Population and Development which indicate that teenage pregnancy – including early marriages – in Northern Mindanao was highest among the country’s 17 regions.
Signed into law on Dec. 10, 2021, R.A. 11596 promotes the welfare of Filipino children by prohibiting and protecting them from entering into any kind of child marriage.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development is the lead agency in the implementation of the provisions and the formulation of programs and services under this Anti-Child Marriage Law. (MT)
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