CEDAW/C/SR. 33 English Page 2 The meeting was called to order at 3.15 p. n.• CONSIDERATION OF REPORTS AND INFCBMATION _SUBMIT'IBD BY STATES PARTIES UNDER ARTICLE 18 OF THE CONVEl'll'ION (continued) Initial report of the Philippines (continued) (CEDllW/C/5/Add.6) Ms. EL-FETOUH said that she had initially had some problems in considering the report of the Philippines, l'XJwever, the excellent introduction and the statistics provided by the Permanent Representative of the Philippines had given her a much clearer view of the way in which the provisions of the Convention were being implemented in that country. Nevertheless, with regard to articles 2 and 3 of the Convention, the report mentioned vario~s bills concerning the Civil Code which had not yet been adopted even though they had been before the legislative bodies since 1979 or 1980. She wished to know whether there was strong opposition in the Philippines to the adoption of those laws. Likewise, a bill had been drafted to modify the laws in force pertaining to adultery and concubinage which had a "double standard of morality". She wished to have an explanation as to whether separate morality codes or separate laws for men and women existed in the Philippines with regard to those offences. As for the bills which would impose severer penalties in cases of rape when the victim was uooer 12 years old or when the er ime was camnitted with the use of deadly weapons or by tl«> or more persons or in the presence of any member of the victim's family, she woooered why it was necessary to promulgate laws with such severe penalties aoo whether that was because such crimes occurred frequently in the Philippines. With regard to the bill to amend the civil law prohibiting a widow from taking out a marriage licence within 300 days of the death of her husband, she wished to have an explanation as to whether that prohibition applied also to divorced women and widowed or divorced men. The information suanitted with regard to article 6 of the Convention stated that the Ministry of Laoor was carrying out research on the conditions of women workers in Hong Kong. She asked whether the study concerned Philippine women working in Hong Kong and, if so, why the study focused on that city and not on others. Finally, she wished to have enumerated the measures adcpted by the Ministry of Culture to inprove the programme of studies of primary schools with a view to ending discrimination on the basis of sex. l. 2. Ms. LAMM said that the report reflected clearly aoo in detail the measures adcpted by the Government since 1981 to promote equality between men and women. In that respect, the report was caiplete and satisfactory. However, in other respects the report did not provide sufficient information and failed to meet the requirements. For example, there were no data on the outcome of the measures adcpted during the past two years and no mention of the legal noons which guaranteed men and women equal rights. Statistical and empirical data were also lacking on women's participation in the country's political, economic and cultural life. In his introduction to the report, the representative of the Philippines had briefly mentioned the situation of women in rural areas. It would be interesting to find out whether the legal norms were also observed in respect of women in rural areas, what opportunities were available to those women to protect their rights and -how the Government encouraged women to strive for them. She also wished to have explained why the Government had felt it necessary to impose such severe and unusual penalties for certain cases of rape. / ...