The Philippines has set the age of sexual consent at 16, amending a nearly century-old law, a change that will help protect young people from rape and sexual abuse, children’s rights activists said.
Under the amended law signed by President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday and released on Monday, sexual relations with a person under the age of 16 will be illegal and can be punished by up to 40 years in prison.
Adolescent couples will be exempt if their age difference is not more than three years and if the sexual relations are consensual.
Until now, according to a law from the 1930s, adults were allowed to have sexual relations with 12-year-olds if the latter agreed.
“This law is a very good protection instrument for our minors against sexual violence, whether it starts online or physically,” said Margarita Ardivilla, a specialist for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in the Philippines.
Children’s rights activists had been pressing the authorities for decades to raise the age of consent, but they always ran up against the social norms of the deeply Catholic country, where neither abortion nor divorce are legal.
According to a government-supported national study in 2015, one in five boys between the ages of 13 and 17 had been a victim of sexual violence, and one in 25 had been raped as a child, UNICEF said.
