Thursday, July 26, 2007 Oledan: Snapshots By Radzini Oledan Slice of Life
MINDANAO has become a favorite piece in the grandstanding of politicians.
It is an area where experimentations on peace and security concerns have further marginalized thousands of children and their families, perpetuating even more the cycle of poverty and social inequality.
It is a place so rich in natural resources where several groups and entities would want to have access to, no matter what the price.
Mindanao contributes more than half to the national Gross Domestic Product. Yet, it gets little in return.
By geographical division, Mindanao has the least access to education and the lowest quality performance.
Within Mindanao, the poorest regions, like Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (Armm) and Western Mindanao stand out as the areas that consistently scored lowest in most education-related indicators.
Central and Western Mindanao have double-digit drop-out rates for elementary level, indicating a strong link between the high incidence of armed conflict and the weakening hold of the school system on its students.
In the last decade, these regions - Armm, Central Mindanao and Western Mindanao - are the most conflict-prone and battered areas in the entire country and the social cost is proving to be quite high, especially for children. The 10 provinces with the lowest Human Development Index rating are in Mindanao.
It is also an area which had become a rich source for profiteering syndicates to traffic women and children into prostitution. Hard life and the lack of options have forced many families and individuals to face the unknown and work somewhere else.
Policy direction and the emphasis on labor export to support the national government's balance of payment deficits have contributed to the trafficking of women and children. In a study conducted by Unicef, the country ranked fourth among nine nations with the most children in prostitution.
Still, the situation in Mindanao may provide a glimpse of the real status of development of the country.
In a World Bank report, 12.7 percent Filipinos were considered as poor or those who lived on less than US$1 a day while 45.9 percent were "near poor" or those who lived on less than US$2 a day.
The NSO reported that poverty incidence affected 19.9 percent of families in urban areas and 46.9 percent in rural areas. Real number of poor families climbed to 5.1 million, 1.5 million of them in urban areas and 3.6 million in rural areas. Some 2.5 million families were living in subsistence level, meaning their income was not enough to buy their basic food requirements.
Some 25,000 people reportedly die of hunger and poverty each day. Measured annually, around six million children under the age of five are dying of hunger.
Child labor remains a problem with an estimated 1.391 million families or 12.8 percent of the total that had working children aged from five years old to 17 years old. According to the NSO, 4 million out of the total 25 million Filipino children are working.
These are just few of the realities on the ground. Far from the grandiose promise of making the Philippines, a first world country in the next few years.
Simple snapshots of the life of children will tell us the true state of our nation.
