CEDAW/C/PHI/4
English
Page 7
C.
Major policy and programme developments
28. The Philippine Plan for Gender-responsive Development, 1995-2025, is the
Philippine Government's 30-year perspective framework for pursuing full equality
and development for women and men. It is the successor plan to the Philippine
Development Plan for Women, 1989-1992, and is the Government's blueprint for
gender mainstreaming. The Plan was approved and adopted by virtue of Executive
Order 273 which, inter alia, prescribes that:
(a) The Philippine Plan for Gender-responsive Development be the main
vehicle for implementing in the Philippines the action commitments made during
the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing;
(b) All government entities at the national, subnational and local levels
implement the Plan; incorporate gender and development concerns in their agency
performance commitment contracts indicating key result areas for such concerns
as well as in their annual performance report to the President; and incorporate
gender and development concerns in agency budget proposals and work and
financial plans.
29. The Medium-term Philippine Development Plan, 1993-1998 enunciates priority
attention being focused on gender and development in all sectors.
30. The Philippine Human Rights Plan, 1996-2000, which was prepared with the
full participation of NCRFW, gives special focus on women's rights as human
rights.
31.
Among the landmark laws passed by the present Congress are the following:
(a) Republic Act 7877, the Anti-Sexual Harassment Act of 1995, which
defines and provides for penalizing sexual harassment in the workplace and in an
education or training setting;
(b) Republic Act 8042, the Magna Carta for overseas contract workers,
seeks to institute policies for the welfare of migrant workers, their families,
and overseas Filipinos;
(c) Republic Act 7882 provides credit assistance to women engaging in
micro and cottage business enterprise.
32. Training on gender-responsive planning has been in full swing for the
different sectors and agencies and selected regional offices since the start of
the NCRFW-CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) institutional
strengthening project. Consequently, agencies have, in varying degrees,
initiated implementation and programming for gender and development activities
in which the most common problem raised was the lack of additional budget for
the implementation of programmes, projects and activities on the subject. In
response to this, the following policy issuances were made:
(a) Presidential directives relative to budgeting for gender and
development;
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