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| The challenge for parents to keep their children safe has grown during the pandemic. Nino Jesus Orbeta/ Inquirer) |
[Asia News = Reporter Reakkana] MANILA—July is Schools Safety and Accident Prevention Month which this year gained a different relevance as the COVID pandemic moved children from schools to homes where more sinister threats awaited them, PH Inquirer reported. In 1966, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos signed Proclamation No. 115-A to promote “safety consciousness” in the midst of “indisputable evidence of a considerable rise” of accidents in schools.
However, 54 years later, students were placed at “greater risk” because of the lockdown that forced them to stay at home for online learning as virus transmission shut schools down. But home, in many cases, does not provide sanctuary to protect children and the youth from physical, sexual, and online abuses, according to a 2015 National Baseline Survey on Violence Against Children in the Philippines. Instead, homes became like torture chambers for children.
This is why when the lockdown was imposed in March 2020, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef) said threats to children simply moved from campuses to homes at increased rates—maltreatment, gender violence and sexual exploitation.
