As Duterte’s drugs war rages on in the Philippines, nation’s children are paying the price
- Hundreds of youngsters in the slums of Manila are plunging further into poverty as families are torn apart by drug-related killings, new research finds
- Faced with financial hardships, these children are at greater risk of dropping out of school, leaving them prone to exploitation and child labour
Jona Javier Abbott lost her husband on September 6, 2016. He was a drug addict and was shot near their home in a slum of Metro Manila. No warning, no chance of survival.
These children are now at greater risk of not completing school either because of trauma, stigma or lack of financial resources, a new study of the nation’s poorest families has found. Many also risk becoming victims of child labour and exploitation, the research shows.
Life was hard for Abbott’s family when her husband worked as a vegetable vendor. But it became nearly impossible after he died. The 30-year-old woman, a caregiver, now struggles to make ends meet every day.
She fears for the future of her children – aged between six and 12. “The money is not enough for me and my children. I need to feed them and buy things for their school projects,” Abbott says.
Some 29,000 deaths had been recorded as of July – many in poor urban communities.
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“By killing mostly male heads of households, the effect and magnitude of the anti-narcotics campaign – compounded by various socio-economic shocks including damage to homes due to fires and flooding – pushes already deprived and vulnerable families further into poverty,” the authors wrote.
The study, released this week, is focused on the beneficiaries of the Philippine conditional cash transfer programme – a monthly subsidy designed for poor households with the aim of breaking intergenerational poverty. It is the first attempt to examine the direct and indirect effects of drug-related killings in these families in Metro Manila, where the highest concentration of drug users has been reported.
The research included field work and interviews with families touched by drug-related killings from April 2016 to December 2017, and found that between 1,365 and 1,865 household members, including at least two children per family, had been affected – although these were “extremely conservative figures”.
“Killing [these] beneficiaries cancels out efforts for social protection and human capital formation especially when beneficiary children drop out of school due to trauma or lack of financial support,” the report said.
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According to the study, “despite the Philippine conditional cash transfer’s official role as the flagship government programme for poverty reduction and social protection, early evidence suggests that the more than 500 billion pesos [US$9.67 billion] invested in beneficiary households over the last decade is being negated by the drug-related killings.”
The death of the male heads of these households has dramatically reduced the families’ incomes for food, clothing, shelter, and health, the researchers said. And it left the children at a greater “risk of child labour and exploitation”.
Women, as widows and sometimes grandmothers, have been left with the burden of providing for the families and raising the orphaned children.
“In the face of the Philippine drug war, women are now faced with the responsibility of productive and domestic labour. With few skills, limited education, and low job prospects, many widows are forced to find new husbands to ensure a source of income,” the study said.
The researchers noted that some of the children ended up being left with grandparents because they were not welcome in the new households. “This scenario is encapsulated in the Filipino phrase – which was repeatedly mentioned in the course of data collection – ‘Dad crossed over to the afterlife, Mum moved to another house. Only grandma is left.’”
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With an average of two children per household enrolled in the Philippine conditional cash transfer government programme, a “conservative estimate” calculated that in Metro Manila alone 600 to 1,200 children beneficiaries had been directly affected by drug-related killings.
“The reduced available income, as well as the social stigma of having a drug-related death in the family, causes children covered by the [programme] to drop out of school,” the report said.
The study also argued that the war on drugs had undermined efforts to build social cohesion in communities due to a “state-sponsored policy that encourages neighbourhood reporting against ‘drug personalities’”.
The researchers said further deaths needed to be prevented, and support must be provided to those left behind.
“Specific monitoring and case management tools must be developed and implemented for children orphaned due to drug-related killings, to ensure that children are able to return to school and issues such as bullying are addressed.”
The authors also noted that “the effects of transgenerational trauma and how it contributes to intergenerational poverty will need to be factored into the design of programmes for addressing the fallout in the years to come”.
According to the latest study’s authors, “beyond purely ‘human-rights’ centred discourse, which has been undermined by state rhetoric, the consequences of the drug-related killings must be understood as a major humanitarian crisis”.
