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Call for media restraint in kids’ crimes reporting
Published on October 8, 2006 - The Bohol Standard Newspaper

SOCIAL workers and children’s rights advocates jointly call the media to exercise restraint in reporting cases of children in conflict with the law (CICL) at the weekly Kapihan sa PIA last week.

“Crime offenders as they are, the state still has the responsibility to protect the best interests of the child through measures ensuring the observance of international standards of child protection, right to assistance, proper care and nutrition and special protection from all forms of neglect, abuse, cruelty, exploitation and other conditions prejudicial to their development,” both sectors press.

“With this in mind, reporting cases involving CICL should be consistent with the promotion of the child’s dignity and worth, accounting the child’s age and desirability of promoting his reintegration,” Lawnet volunteer lawyer Gertrude Biliran urges.

The law also says the state shall ensure that children are dealt with appropriately by providing them a variety of disposition measures: care, guidance and supervision orders, counseling, probation, foster care, education and vocational training programs and other alternatives to institutional care, the least of them is detention.

“Victims of circumstances and neglect, some children coming from broken if not impoverished families have started to adopt the life in a mad rat scramble, some literally clawing to get food to fill their stomachs. This situation would sound unfair if we throw them into the jails for committing a crime the society and their families could ably help to rehabilitate them, said social workers in a random telephone survey conducted by PIA. (rachiu/PIA)

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