GOV.PH
The Center for Gender and Development of the Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges launched this year’s campaign to end Violence Against Women with a seminar series on Gender and Development policies on November 25, 2021.
Directed at CSPC employees and student leaders, the first of the seminar series discussed RA11313 or the Safe Spaces Act to employees with Atty. Xavierra Marie Revereza of the Commission on Human Rights Regional Office 5 (CHR-ROV).
The second seminar lectured employees on Anti-Violence Against Women and their Children or RA 9262 as delivered by Atty. Ma. Cleofe Gettle C. Sandoval of the Philippine Commission for Women’s National GAD Resource Pool (PCW-NGRP) on December 3, 2021. Atty. Sandoval also discussed both policies to CSPC student leaders on the seminar series’ last leg on December 10, 2021.
This 18-day Campaign to End Violence Against Women was started in 2016 by the Inter-Agency Council on Violence Against Women and Children (IACVAWC) in accordance with Proclamation No. 1172. According to the organizers, this shows the government’s “commitment to addressing all forms of violence against women” and the latter’s goals of “protecting women’s human rights as enshrined in the 1987 Constitution”.
Also, the talk on the Safe Spaces Act comes from the event’s organizers emphasized that 2 years after the policy’s enactment, there is this need to “intensify awareness-raising on the core provisions of the law, penalties, and mechanisms in place.”
This is amidst the COVID-19 pandemic which according to the same “breeds various forms of VAW, particularly online.”
