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According to the Philippine Resource Network there are 1.5 million street children in the Philippines. The shadow of a modern shopping mall falls on the intersection where these children and the homeless mother and child sleep. In the corner of a pedestrian underpass, hundreds, perhaps thousands, walk by them daily. This isn’t unusual either. We accommodate to it because we don’t know how to change it, so it continues.

UNICEF reported 200,000 children were victimized by human rights abuses in the Philippines. To escape grinding poverty children are joining rebel movements and taking up arms.
As usual, the Armed Forces of the Philippines denounced the report saying UNICEF had listened only to leftists and the numbers were skewed. This has become a template reaction and it reveals just how distanced from reality the established powers are. When I was in the Philippines a year ago with a human rights delegation my writing was criticized by a military officer in the same way. The Army of the Philippines’ response to human rights abuses is predictable.


The Philippine Resource Network says only 19% of children aged 4 to 6 years old are able to go to public or private pre-schools. More than one-third of the smallest municipalities cannot offer education up to the sixth grade and 60% of children drop of out school by the second grade.

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