Anilao dive to clean up sea also for girls’ rights

Asked what she wants to be when she grows up, a young girl from Masbate said she had dreamt of going to Manila and becoming a house helper.

Another girl from Samar had planned to go to Angeles City in Pampanga province to become a “GRO” (guest relations officer).

Their accounts, documented by Plan International Philippines, are just a few of the gender-based issues concerning the rights of young girls. Girls, aged up to 17 years, are found more vulnerable than boys to sexual abuses, discrimination, teen pregnancy and fixed marriage, the group says.

On May 31, Plan International, a global children’s development organization, led a shore dive cleanup in Anilao in Mabini town, Batangas province, which, according to its campaign coordinator Rizza Sacra, aimed to “symbolically” promote girls’ rights in a male-dominated sports of diving and, at the same time, mark the International Month of the Ocean.

In partnership with iDive Manila and Miss Earth Foundation, 14 adults, mostly females, led the 30-meter dive that yielded nine sacks of trash collected from the ocean.

“Children can only realize their maximum talent and abilities if they grow up in a clean and healthy environment. We can only give them a good future if we continue to save our seas and forests,” Marco Savio, Plan International deputy country director, said in an e-mailed statement.

Sacra said the cleanup dive was part of efforts to promote Plan’s “Because I am a Girl,” a 2-year-old campaign seeking to underscore the importance of child education and put an end to gender-based violence among children. In the Philippines, the campaign particularly addresses teen pregnancies and child abuses.

Sexually abused

“In the Philippines, 93 percent of sexually abused victims are girls (while) one in every 10 girls (aged 15-19) is either pregnant or is already a mother,” she said in a phone interview on Monday.

Plan International, which focuses on 420 poor communities in the provinces of Masbate, Occidental Mindoro, Southern Leyte, Eastern Samar and Northern Samar, also records cases of children, as young as 13, being forced to work early.

“(But) the priority, for instance to work in the farms, is still given to the boys while the girls are trained for household chores,” Sacra said. In indigenous communities, girls are being forced to marry once they hit puberty, she said.