Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 25) — Government agencies backed two Senate bills that recognize all foundlings, or children with unknown parents, as Filipino citizens.
The Department of Justice said this will institutionalize the 2016 ruling of the Supreme Court on the case of then presidential candidate Senator Grace Poe.
The court allowed her to run for the post despite petitions claiming she could not run for office. In 2015, petitioner Rizalito David also filed a case before the Senate Electoral Tribunal alleging that she was not a natural-born Filipino and therefore not qualified to be a sitting senator.
“We are well aware that there was a Supreme Court decision sometime in the past particularly the case of Poe-Llamanzares, wherein the highest court declared that as a matter of law, foundlings are, as a class, natural born citizens,” DOJ state counsel Paulito De Jesus told the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality on Thursday.
“Domestic laws on adoption support the principle that foundlings are Filipinos,” he added.
Poe was left by her unknown parents in a church in Jaro in 1968. The man who found her had her registered as a foundling in Iloilo City, according to court records. Actor couple Fernando Poe, Jr. and Susan Roces took her in as their child and completed the legal adoption process in 1974.
The measures filed by Senators Lito Lapid and Risa Hontiveros seek to protect abandoned children, saying they are natural-born Filipinos “regardless of the status or circumstances of birth.” Meanwhile, people who find and care for these foundlings will be recognized as their legitimate parents.
Officials from the Departments of Health and Social Welfare and Development also supported the proposal, while the United Nations Refugee Agency said the proposed law should carry a retroactive provision so that older foundlings, including those who have turned 18 years old, will no longer be considered at risk of statelessness.
The House of Representatives passed its own version of the bill in October 2020.
