Thursday, October 23, 2008 Editorial: How are the evacuees?
WITH Moro Islamic Liberation Front's Kumander Bravo coming out and challenging the military to an "ubusan ng lahi," civilians can only brace for the worse.
Sooner than not, even those who have returned to their homes might just have to pack up anew and flee.
Even before the hostilities could end and all evacuees could return, Kumander Bravo is out taunting the military anew, saber-rattling. Clearly, the MILF commander has not had enough yet.
We worry for all the evacuees, their children, especially, the future. How are they coping and is assistance being given them according to their needs?
With no intention to look down on the assistance being given to evacuees for months on end, there is but the question that cannot be tamped down: have we truly asked what the evacuees need? Have we truly listened to them?
Indeed, the basics are necessary -- shelter, food, clothing plus living amenities and medical aid. Then there's the psycho-social concerns that have to be attended to. But beyond that, has any government agency gathered them to ask what they yearn for deep within them, like maybe assurances of a livelihood should they return to their homes.
Having to flee homes with just a portion of one's belongings means having to return to a worse economic situation. Most of these families are farming folks who reared farm animals, tended gardens, farm lots, or even fruit trees. A family can only drag along maybe a carabao or two, some chickens, and the dog on top of their clothes and a few kitchen utensils.
No way can a family bring out all their possessions when they're fleeing from a war. Several chickens will have to be left behind, and even a goat or two, and the cat. For a farm family, this already means a lot. Add to that the damage to their homes, their burned and bombed properties. They will be picking up pieces of their lives should they ever return home, pieces that may not even be able to sustain a family, much less their future.
Multiply these by tens of thousands or more and you get whole communities returning home with a significant drop in their living standards. Living standards that were already tipping the poverty scale.
Multiply these by tens of thousands or more and you get whole communities who may not even opt to go home and instead just try their luck in the urban areas that have been their temporary shelter. Urban areas that do not have farmlands for them to till. Urban areas that prey on children and the youth as ready and willing sources of cheap labor, if not sexual favors.
How about their children who have to huddle in those evacuation centers, barely able to continue their studies? It's been two months now since the first set of evacuees packed up and fled their homes. Does relief assistance even include support for the children's education outside the free, but not so structured, classes that are held to keep the children busy in evacuation centers?
How many of these families too are inclined to keep their children in school when they need every available hand to generate income?
Indeed, they may have been poor families before they fled, but they are poorer now, yanked out from their lands that has sustained them, and turned to parasites of aid.
Are there programs preparing them for their eventual return, to help them not just pick up the pieces of their lives but enable them to build from these pieces.
We hope there are, and we hope such programs are appropriate, custom-designed to each community's needs. But most of all, we hope somebody is really sitting down with them, asking them what are their greatest fears and their needs.
