Govt, META set up system to stop online baby selling

OFFICIALS of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) finally sat down yesterday with representatives of META Philippines, mother company of the social media platform Facebook, in a bid to set up a mechanism to report and shut down accounts engaged in the online selling of babies and human trafficking.

Sixteen of 23 Facebook accounts engaged in online selling of children have been shut down.

The DSWD-META meeting was prompted by letters sent by the National Authority for Child Care (NACC), an attached agency of the DSWD, that requested Meta to shut down Facebook accounts that are used in the online selling of babies in the guise of adoption.

Present in the meeting were DSWD officials led by Secretary Rex Gatchalian and META Philippines representatives led by director for public policy Clare Amador.

“We have created a working relationship with META whether to report to them directly or through reporting channels to create a more robust mechanism. And to also work with them on developing a campaign against human trafficking,” Gatchalian said in a statement after their meeting.

“We have to treat this (online illegal adoption) with the same severity on how META takes immediate action on the violations of the Anti-OSAEC (Online Sexual Abuse or Exploitation of Children) law,” he also said.

During the meeting, NACC executive director Janella Estrada said that while 16 of the 23 reported Facebook pages engaged in online selling of babies have been shut down, new pages were again created and used in the illegal activity.

Gatchalian instructed the NACC to dedicate a team that will monitor the social media pages and work with META to expedite the taking down of the pages, and create a more robust mechanism that will be beneficial in fighting this form of human trafficking.

The NACC and the PNP have intercepted several attempts to sell babies online for P50,000 to P100,000.