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Congress now looks set to approve a bill to raise the age of sexual consent to 16.
Campaigners say the legislation would help protect youngsters in a nation that has become a global hotspot for online child sex abuse and where more than 500 teenagers get pregnant and give birth every day.
'This is a victory for Filipino children,' Patrizia Benvenuti, UNICEF's chief of child protection in the Philippines, said recently as the proposed legislation moved closer to a final vote.
'Pegging 12 as the age of consent is really not consistent with scientific studies on brain development.'
Manila teenager Rose Alvarez was 13 when she started having sex with a man who was more than twice her age. That would be statutory rape in most countries, but not in the Philippines.