Philippine News Digest 33
August 5, 2002 ·
Contents:
- Study find boys hide sexual abuse
- Vietnam tighten curbs on adoptions
- Human progress improving- UN
Study find boys hide sexual abuse
A new study from the University of South Australia has found that boys generally keep silent about sexual abuse and use a variety of techniques to mask the effects of the abuse. It also revealed that one in six boys would be abused sexually before their 16th birthday but it was believed that less than 10% of abused boys would rep[ort the abuse. Male sexual abuse victims rarely told anyone at the time of the abuse and when they did, it was usually many years later and expressed to a female. Source: Childwise Newsletter June-July 2002.
Vietnam tighten curbs on adoptions
Vietnam has introduced a new decree that tightens controls over foreign adoptions of Vietnamese children in an attempt to halt fraud and child trafficking. Under the new decree, all adoptions must be approved by a special foreign adoption agency and children may only be adopted by foreigners from countries which have bilateral adoption agreements with Vietnam. More than 10,000 Vietnamese children have been adopted by foreigners since Communist Vietnam opened to the outside world in the mid 1980s. About two dozen people, including some government officials, have been in the past two years from soliciting children from unwed mothers and poor families and falsifying documents for hundreds of children sold to brokers for foreign adoption. Source: Associated Press report in Today, 3 August 2002.
Human progress improving- UN
While the recently released UN Human Development study found progress in most countries, it also reported that countries in Eastern and Central Europe, the former Soviet Union and sub-Saharan Africa have lost ground over the past decade in terms of life expectancy, education and income per person. Furthermore, more than 60 of 173 countries ranked in this year’s human development index have lower per capita income today than before 1990. In 26 countries, incomes are lower than in 1980. Norway retained the top ranking from a year ago, followed by Sweden, Canada and Belgium. Australia is fifth, while the US is down one spot to sixth. Source: Associated Press report in Philippine Daily Inquirer, 25 July 2002.
