After the fall of the Marcos regime in 1986, increasing demands for reforms in government policies, legislation and programs affecting children made the government respond by ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) on July 26, 1990. The CRC entered into force as an international agreement on September 2, 1990. The convention directs the ratifying countries to “recognize the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.”[20]