Duterte vetoes bill to ban punishment of children

manila — A draft law that would have made it illegal for parents to smack their children in the Philippines has been vetoed by President Rodrigo Duterte, the presidential palace said on Thursday.

The bill would have banned physical, humiliating, or degrading acts of punishment or discipline by parents or teachers on children.

“I am aware that there is a growing trend, prevalent in Western nations, that sees all forms of corporal punishment as an outdated form of disciplining children,” Duterte told Congress, explaining why he would not sign it into law.

“I strongly believe that we should resist this trend,” he said in a statement on Thursday, adding he believed parents should be able to impose corporal punishment.

The president has also called for the age of criminal liability — currently 15 years old — to be lowered, to give more teeth to a narcotics crackdown that has claimed the lives of more than 5,000 drug suspects.

Richard Dy, spokesman for the Child Rights Network, said rights groups were surprised at Duterte’s veto.

Dy said three in five Filipino children are victims of psychological and physical violence, and “more than half of these are happening at home”.

“There is a cultural norm in the Philippines that we can hit children in order to discipline them. That’s what we wanted changed with this bill,” Dy said. —

There is a cultural norm in the Philippines that we can hit children in order to discipline them. That’s what we wanted changed with this bill

Richard Dy, Child Rights Network spokesman