Increasing the Impact of Remittances on Children's Rights: Philippines Paper, c2007
F. K. Coronel; F. Unterreiner
Global Policy Section-UNICEF
E-mail: globalpolicy@unicef.org

This paper aims at understanding how in the case of the Philippines, remittances could have a greater impact on the realization of children's rights. It intends to use all relevant data and information available for the Philippines to understand, define and precise: (a) the trends and pattern of migration (with a gender approach) that actually influences the pattern and flow of remittances; (b) the psycho-social impact of migration and remittance flows on left behind child(ren) and spouse, taking into the natural resilience of children to adjust to changes and pressures in their environment; (c) the ways remittances can/ could work towards mitigating the negative impact of migration on children with reference to existing initiatives from social institutions, community organizations or networks; (d) the relationship between remittances and the promotion and realization of children's rights; (e) research areas and policy level interventions for further studies and action for greater impact of remittances on children rights.

As such, the paper only represents a first step prior to the conduction of more extensive studies focusing on remittances and aims at defining clear areas for research as well as for policy and program interventions that shall help improve the use and effects of remittances for the realization of the rights of the children.