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Sunday, March 21, 2004
Why does ARMM lag in human development?
EXTREME poverty, conflict, and historical disadvantage. These are the three factors contributing to the human development lags in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), according to a new report released by the Manila office of World Bank.
"By almost any measure, the ARMM has the poorest human development outcomes among the 16 regions in the Philippines," deplored the report, "Human Development for Peace and Prosperity in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao."
"A child born in the region today has very limited prospects for a long, productive, and healthy life compared with children in the rest of the country," said the bank's Human Development Sector Unit in East Asia and Pacific Region, which released the report.
"This child has a substantially higher than average chance of being born to a mother who is not functionally literate and into a family sharing a lower than average income, and of living in a home without access to safe water or a sanitary toilet."
Located in the southernmost reaches of the Philippine archipelago, the ARMM consists of five provinces (Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu, Basilan, and Tawi-Tawi) and one city (Marawi). The region has a population of 2.87 million - that 3.75 percent of the country's total population.
Extreme poverty
The report was based on a study conducted in 2000. That year, the incidence of poverty in ARMM was almost twice for the national as a whole - 62.9 percent of the population could be considered poor compared with 34.0 percent for the country as a whole.
"The other regions of Mindanao fell between these two numbers, but poverty incidence in ARMM was strikingly higher than in those other regions. Moreover, the average annual household income in ARMM was only 57 percent of the national average," wrote Teresa Ho and Elizabeth King, who prepared the report.
Extreme poverty has greatly affected the health status of the population in the region. While diarrhea, malaria and measles no longer appear in the list of top 10 killers for the country, these are still the major causes of death in one or more of the ARMM provinces. On the brighter side, heart diseases - the top killer nationwide since 1990 - do not appear among the top five in three of the four provinces.
ARMM has also the poorest indicators of access to safe water and sanitation and of women's literacy among all regions. In fact, the region with the second lowest rate of functional literacy for women, Western Mindanao, is adjacent to ARMM and probably has populations with similar literacy rates.
Armed conflict
"Really exhausting." That's how an evacuee described to a staff of the World Bank in another report, "Social Assessment of Conflict-Affected Areas in Mindanao."
He explains, "We are able to escape from the deafening mayhem only with our lives. We walk for days in search of a place of safety. No water, no food and certainly no time to cry. Family members also get separated. Most of us have experienced it at least twice in our lives."
"Mindanao was the southern frontier of the Philippines during much of the first 100 years of the Philippine republic," wrote Ho and King in their collaborative effort.
"Previously, the outer reaches of Muslim Mindanao had gone through a history of independence and warfare against the Spanish colonizers before cultivating a delicate balance of resistance and collaboration toward the American colonizers who, with greater military power than Spain, were more successful at integrating them into the larger Philippine nation."
It was in the early 1970s that "large-scale, armed conflict in Mindanao" started.
His conflict continues to this day, "though it is largely sporadic in nature."
The report explains: "A particular community may see no outbreak for several months then suddenly be subject to firefights or large-scale hostilities - the community could evacuate, return, and evacuate again, or receive evacuees from other communities."
"Evacuating and conflict is very tiring," commented Manong Nerio, who settled temporarily in Barangay Pedtad in Kabacan, North Cotabato after a conflict erupted in his barangay. Whenever new armed groups enter our communities, tensions immediately mount. The community becomes unstable even if violent confrontations do not occur yet. We are always in a constant state of alertness and our deep fright prevents us from engaging in farming or other forms of livelihood. How can we sustain any economic activity? They always barge into our communities when it's harvest season. At any rate, gunfire exchange soon erupts and we are forced to leave everything."
Historical disadvantage
Exclusion and alienation - these are the price the people have to pay for the region's long history of independence, separatism, and cultural assertiveness.
"Consciously or unconsciously, national authorities responsible for guiding and supporting the Philippines through decades of development have tended to neglect Muslim Mindanao," noted the World Bank report.
"More fundamentally, the underpinnings of nationhood that define the region's ties to the rest of the country continue to be questioned on both sides, obstructing the region's ability to participate fully in the progress and development enjoyed by the rest of the country."
The provinces and peoples of ARMM also lack some of the critical factors that would unify them internally as a society, the reported pointed out. Made, over
time, from five original territories constituting what was called "Moro Province" or Mindanao-Sulu under the colonial administration (Davao, Zamboanga,
Cotabato, Lanao and Sulu), today's ARRM is less homogeneous as a region than is generally assumed.
Basilan province was carved out of Zamboanga in 1973. Maguindanao province is one of the five provinces that were spun out of the original Cotabato territory. Lanao del Sur came from Lanao. The original Sulu territory became Sulu province in 1917, from which a separate Tawi-Tawi province was formed. Hence, except for Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, the ARMM provinces were formed from different territories, each having had quite different colonial and postcolonial administrative experiences.
In addition, the five ARMM provinces are home to as many as 13 ethno-linguistic groups, the major ones being the Maguindanaoans of the old Cotabato province, the Maranaos in Lanao, and the Tausugs in the Sulu archipelago.
"Muslim communities shared little aside from Islam," writes Patricio Abinales in his book, "Making Mindanao: Cotabato and Davao in the Formation of the Philippine Nation State." "They spoke related but mutually unintelligible languages and differed socially and politically in significant ways."
So, how can ARMM be helped? The World Bank report outlines various plans, programs, strategies, and policies and calls for participation by all major actors in the region - national, regional, and local governments; education, health, and social protection officials and staff; civil society and the communities it represents; and external donors and funding agencies - with the lead role belonging to the regional government, which must motivate partners to take concerted action.
"For ARMM, no strategy for human development would be complete without a call for a humane and permanent resolution of the ongoing conflict in the region," the report urges. "The responsibility for this action lies with all parties, from the country's leadership at the highest levels to the regional government, the armed factions, and further down to the communities, families and individuals resident in the region," it added. (HDT)
(March 21, 2004 issue)
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