CEDAW/C/PHI/5-6 177. Media has the capacity to influence how people look at the world, and as such, must promote a balanced and non-stereotyped image of women and men. Such a view promotes women’s greater participation, allowing women to freely practice their rights to free speech and expression, avail of new communication technologies, or become key decisionmakers in the news desk or production room. 178. The absence of a lead government agency or instrumentality responsible for policymaking and monitoring for women and media has adversely affected the government’s ability to address gender issues in the media. Even without such agency, however, a positive media environment among media practitioners should be created. This would involve re-orienting/sensitizing women media practitioners on the important roles they play in highlighting women’s issues vis-à-vis other human related issues, and setting up a database to determine the extent that trimedia advertisements portray women in sexist, demeaning and stereotypical roles. 179. The campaign to eliminate pornography, which perpetuates women as mere objects, is hampered by the lack of effective legislation against trafficking in pornographic materials and the absence of a government agency that is tasked to combat pornography on print. In the meantime, the interior and local government department is implementing an anti-pornography drive in cooperation with NGOs. However, a comprehensive approach to the problem of pornography is required, including an anti-pornography law. Pornography is linked to poverty, as it is viewed as a means of escape for those who are economically deprived. Cutthroat competition has encouraged the print media, the tabloids and the cinema in particular, to outsell each other by going into smut and pornography, perpetuating images of women and girls as rape victims and their bodies as commodities. Article 6 Exploitation of Women Suppression of trafficking of women and exploitation of prostitution A. SITUATION OF WOMEN Trafficking in women and children 180. A number of women who leave the country as entertainers, fiancées of foreign nationals, service workers, tourists or undocumented workers fall victim to organized criminal syndicates. Their undocumented or illegal status has kept them outside the protection of laws. From 1992 to December 2002, the Philippine Foreign Service establishments recorded 1,084 cases of human trafficking. Data reported is very low compared to the number of actual victims not reported. This may be attributed to the lack of a systematic monitoring mechanism on the movement of Filipino migrants. Women comprised 66 percent of the victims, of whom 18 percent had been forced into prostitution. The government repatriated 31 percent of the victims. 181. In 2000, the Philippine Center on Transnational Crime recorded 153 cases of illegal recruitment, illegal migration and human trafficking. The Commission for Filipinos Overseas 59