Poverty, Abuse Force Davao’s Children to the Streets

Obviously, the Alias had not been beneficiaries of the efforts of Bankerohan’s Barangay Council for the Protection of Children (BCPC), which had been cited for “best practice” by the Unicef in 1999 and 2000.

According to Leon Dominador Fajardo, Unicef area focal officer for Davao City, the selection of Bankerohan’s BCPC for “best practice” had been “mainly an initiative of the city government.” He also explains that the selection was based on the city government’s implementation of education and feeding programs for Davao’s poor children.

Fajardo says that the Unicef is “definitely concerned” about the killing of minors and had informally expressed this concern to the city government and such agencies as the Commission on Human Rights. He adds, “We have urged the city government to squarely face this problem. Children in conflict with the law have rights. We should never lose hope on them.”

When asked if it is perhaps about time that something more than “expressing concern” was done about the situation, Fajardo replies, “We still believe that, as far as policies and programs for children are concerned, Davao City has made a lot of contributions that other cities are using as a model. It is still positive to engage with the city. It would be too hasty and too careless to condemn the (local) government for what is going on.”

In fairness, even child-rights advocates recognize that Davao had the first child welfare code in the country. It was largely because of this code, which focuses on child protection and the establishment of programs for children, that it was twice recognized as the “Most Child-Friendly City” by the national government.

But the code’s good intentions and aims seem to be lost on many local authorities, who continue to ignore the rights of children in trouble with the law, especially if these happen to be poor. In a study commissioned by Save the Children-UK, Karapatan’s Templa found that the city’s juvenile justice system is not responsive to the needs of young offenders. “Of the city’s 180 barangays,” observes Templa, “only one has a special procedure for handling children in conflict with the law.”

In focus group discussions, it also appeared that barangays in the city exert little effort, if at all, to protect these children. Many officials don’t even know there are laws relevant to children, she says.

This, she adds, “indicates very low appreciation of children’s rights. They especially don’t appreciate the rights of children in poverty circumstances.”

“To the rest of the world, these children do not exist,” she says. This makes them vulnerable to abuse, both by police and criminals.”

In fact, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte insists it is “not true” that minors have been among the victims of extra-judicial killings. “The problem is that I and the NGOs operate on a different paradigm. They are concerned about human rights. I am concerned about crime. And life is never fair. We are not in a perfect world.”

“I don’t buy what the NGOs are saying, that we should address first, for example, poverty,” he said in a recent interview. “If we go into that, into a social study of poverty, we will all be killed. What happens to society if we individualize the situation and in the meantime crime goes unabated?”

Guasa, for her part, says such conditioning by the city’s leaders of the public’s perception of the problem just makes matters worse. These days, Guasa says even some of the mothers of the dead teenagers say their children had their gruesome ends coming. Nanay Clarita may still be grieving for her murdered sons, but Guasa says, “I can never forget one mother who told me that at least she no longer has a problem because her child is dead.”

Part One: Teenagers Perish in Davao’s Killing Fields