Make a composition or article about Anti-VAWC (Violence Against Women and Children) in the Philippines in relation with the theme: "VAW-Free Community Starts With ME"  

The definition of 'violence against women and children involves not only physical violence, and thus sexual violence, psychological violence, and economic abuse, involving threats of such acts, battery, assault, intimidation, harassment, or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, under Republic Act No. 9262, commonly known as the Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act of 2004 ('VAWC'). The law penalizes any action or series of acts perpetrated by any individual against a woman who is his or her wife, former wife, or a woman with whom he or she has a sexual or dating relationship, or with whom he or she has a common child, and against her or her child, either legitimate or unlawful, within or without the domicile of the family. 

Step-by-step explanation

The definition of 'violence against women and children involves not only physical violence, and thus sexual violence, psychological violence, and economic abuse, involving threats of such acts, battery, assault, intimidation, harassment, or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, under Republic Act No. 9262, commonly known as the Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act of 2004 ('VAWC'). The law penalizes any action or series of acts perpetrated by any individual against a woman who is his or her wife, former wife, or a woman with whom he or she has a sexual or dating relationship, or with whom he or she has a common child, and against her or her child, either legitimate or unlawful, within or without the domicile of the family. 

Those in Congress also felt the need to extend the legislation to explicitly cover acts of violence using electronic messaging and social media sites to cause psychological violence in the 15 years after the enactment of the VAWC. The House Bill No. 8655, which aims to pass the "Expanded" Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act, is one such representation of this desire to modernize the law. However, it should not ignore note that the Republic Act No. 10175, or the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, significantly amended the VAWC by criminalizing all criminal activities committed by the use of information and communications technology under the VAWC as cyber crimes. 

Last December, the House of Representatives passed a bill on final reading to help victims, law enforcers, prosecutors, and the court prosecute violators and abusers who use electronic communication and social media networks to inflict psychological violence by bullying, harassment, stalking, pubbing, as a response to the recent and emerging threats to the safety of children and women. 

House Bill 8655 or the Expanded Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children[Act of 2004] (E-VAWC) Bill[3] aims to amend the Republic Act No. 9262 by penalizing any use of ICT devices for psychological violence. By incorporating psychological abuse perpetrated with the use of electronic devices or ICT, the bill seeks to broaden the scope of protection provided to women and children.

Section 3(a) of the E-VAWC Bill specifies that any action concerning the use or misuse of data or any sort of ICT that causes or is likely to cause mental, emotional or psychological distress or pain to women and their children is referred to as electronic or ICT-related abuse. More precisely, the E-VAWC Bill seeks to provide an additional layer of security to a field that is very vulnerable by incorporating actions that have not been historically identified or acknowledged. Some of these banned activities have recently captured the public's attention because of obvious technical abuse. 

However it should be acknowledged that such acts of violence against women & children concerning the use of ICT technology are also penalized as crimes under current laws. The Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, Section 6 of which introduces a higher punishment for crimes already established and penalized by existing penal laws and committed by and with the use of information and communication technologies, is perhaps the most relevant of these laws. The new VAWCC will be among these existing rules. 

The Anti-Child Pornography Act passed in 2009, narrowly describes "child pornography" as including electronic, mechanical, digital, optical, magnetic or any other means of any depiction of child pornography, either visual, audio or written. Another current statute, the Anti-Photo and Video Voyeurism Act or Republic Act No. 9995, forbids, without the permission of the individuals portrayed in the content, the filming of videos or taking photographs of a sexual act, the male or female genitals, and the female breast, among others. R.A. A. No. 9995 was intended to act as a deterrent to the increasing duplication, dissemination, and disclosure of the content irrespective of whether the individuals portrayed agreed to the recording or not. 

Any overlap between actions previously penalized under current laws and those intended to be punished under the E-VAWC Bill may very well be there. Unauthorized recording, duplication, dissemination, use, posting or posting, or any photograph, video, or other type of electronic and/or artistic display showing or portraying the genitals of a woman and those of her children in any manner or form are some of the acts involved in ICT-related violence in E-VAWC, any alleged violent or errant conduct of a woman and her children or the use of intoxicating or prohibited substances or drugs, and any similar recording, replication, distribution, use, sharing or uploading of any audio presentation and data, including sound clips of the same nature as those referred to above, which may be construed as lewd, indecent or obscene.

Like the punishable acts in the R.A. E-VAWC provisions No. 9995 also include prohibition on any unauthorized use of a photograph, video, voice recording, name or any mark, reference or character identifiable with a woman and her children and suggesting an abuse, behavior or attribute that manages to undermine the woman's and her children's reputation.

Since 2002, the Philippine government has been involved in this worldwide movement to eradicate violence against women (VAW). Presidential Proclamation 1172 s., acknowledging that sex trafficking is a form of VAW. In 2006, the national campaign was expanded to 18 days, including 12 December, a landmark date that marked the beginning of the signing, in 2000, of the United Nations Protocol to Deter, Combat and Prosecute Trafficking in Persons, in particular Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime. The strategy of the 2017 campaign is to help people consider VAW from the victim-survivors' perspective. Such a broader understanding is supposed to spark compassion from stakeholders so that they do not participate, condone, or remain silent on VAW. For service providers, more compassion for survivors of victims will enable them to provide their clients with better care. 

The 'VAW-Free Society Begins with Me' movement aimed to highlight the dedication and efforts of all to end VAW and to continue our pursuit of our shared goal of a VAW-free community. The campaign clearly has the following goals: 

• The social understanding of VAW and the vision through different activities to build VAW-free communities;
• Develop an ideal image of a VAW-free society, urging the wider populace to make a personal dedication to ending violence against women and children;
• Emphasize what each individual or sector can do to promote VAW-FREE communities; and
• Strengthen collaborations with the private and public sectors to foster a VAW-free culture.