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News
September 15, 2010
Citizens’
groups offer Shadow Report to help Gov’t
catch up on MDGs
Citizens groups of the network Social Watch
Philippines (SWP) today handed over the
citizen’s shadow report on the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) to Senate President
Juan Ponce Enrile, Speaker of the House of
Representatives Feliciano Belmonte and to
the members of the House Committee on the
MDGs as a gesture of seriousness in poverty
alleviation and helping increase financing
for social development.
President Noynoy Aquino is set to present
the Fourth Philippines’ Progress Report on
the MDGs to over a hundred heads of State in
New York this September. The MDGs is the set
of measurable targets which heads of state
promised to fulfil by 2015 in order to
eradicate poverty and hunger, reduce
inequality and promote human rights.
“The Citizens Report on the MDGs is a
brutally frank assessment of government
efforts and failures on its commitment to
the MDGs. I call on all government agencies
involved in the implementation of programs
to work closely with those who wrote the
Citizens MDG Report 2010,” said Senator
Enrile. “We are racing against time,
millions of lives must be protected. We need
to put our acts together and save as many
Filipino lives as we can,” he added.
The Senate President also said that the
Senate shall continue to pass law on the
attainment of the MDGs and shall continue to
scrutinize the agencies’ programs on the
MDGs. “I myself will study the assessment
and recommendations from the Citizens’ MDG
Report,” said Enrile.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte
said that the House of Representative will
help civil society groups to move the
government and the people to exert more
effort on the MDGs. “The House will continue
to put the necessary pressure to achieve
more effort on the MDGs. The House of
Representatives would like to thank the
citizens’ groups who wrote the Citizens’ MDG
Report for having monitored the country’s
progress for the last ten years,” Belmonte
said.
“The Philippines is in a worse poverty
situation in 2010 than when it started on
the MDGs in 2000. We are losing the war on
poverty. Many would still be left behind,
and their numbers are simply staggering by
any count,” said Isagani Serrano, SWP
convenor and editor of the citizens’ report
on the MDGs. “The Medium-Term Philippine
Development Plan (MTPDP) failed on its
promise to reduce the poverty incidence of
families by 20 percent come 2010,” he added.
“The shadow report ‘Winning the Numbers,
Losing the War: The Other MDG Report 2010’
intends to feed into the annual planning and
budgeting processes and the new regime’s
six-year blueprint,” Serrano explained.
“Our hope is to see an MTPDP and local
development plans that are truly MDG-sensitive
and committed to deliver on the minimalist
MDG promises,” he added.
Serrano said that, in sharp contrast to the
Philippines Fourth Progress Report on the
MDGs 2010, the shadow report warns that the
problem is much more serious than what the
government is prepared to admit. “The
official report was impressive in its
goal-by-goal analysis and solutions, but
many of the quantitative indicators on key
goals such as education, maternal and infant
mortality and poverty eradication are still
between low and medium probability of
achievement when they should all be on the
high side going into the last five years,”
he said.
Former national treasurer Leonor Magtolis
Briones, SWP lead convenor, said that it is
obvious that the financing gap on the MDGs
is a major reason on why the poverty
situation is worse in 2010 than when the
country started on the MDGs in 2000. “An
MDG-sensitive budget will correct the
inequalities highlighted in the Shadow
report. A budget to provide education,
health, decent work, food security for all
-- not just for a half or for two-thirds of
the poor – will ensure that no Filipino is
left behind,” Briones said.
Serrano added that the shadow report also
digs into the less obvious reasons of not
attaining the minimalist set of goals
despite MDG-oriented policy declarations and
national development plans.
Marivic Raquiza, SWP convenor and lead
writer on poverty (MDG 1), pointed out that,
in the first place, the country has a very
low poverty threshold of P41 per person per
day, which is not enough to cover the food,
medical, education, transportation and
rental expenses of any person.
Meanwhile, Rene Raya of E-Net Philippines
said that while the government report
admitted the poor performance and failings
of the education sector, the analysis and
arguments presented appear to be restrained.
“Stagnation and reversals in education since
2000 left the marginalized further behind,
thus, exacerbating inequality even more. We
need budget and mechanisms to effectively
reach out to the ‘unreached’, particularly
the non-literates, the out-of-school,
indigenous people and Muslim children, and
other socially excluded sectors,” said Raya.
“The country has long been under investing
in education with a total education
expenditure level that consistently declined
from 3.5% of GDP in 2000 to only 2.4% of GDP
in 2004,” he added.
Meanwhile, the shadow report writers on
health laud the President’s promises of
universal health care within three years’
time and to reform of the health insurance
system to achieve universal coverage.
“The Philippines is one of 68 countries
where 97 percent of all neonatal, child
and maternal deaths worldwide occurs.
Ensuring equity could prevent 40 percent
of all child deaths, which occur largely
among poor children,” said May-I Fabros,
lead writer on infant mortality.
Mercy Fabros of Woman Health Philippines
and lead writer on maternal health noted
that the Philippines is one of 55
countries that accounts for 94 percent
of all maternal deaths in the world. “In
2007, the Philippines spent 6.8 percent
of government expenditures on health
compared with the average of 9.9 percent
of government expenditures for the East
Asia Region,” Fabros said. “To achieve
universal health care, we should shift
the relative weight of public spending
from tertiary services that cater to the
affluent to basic services and public
health that benefit the poor,” she
added.
Meanwhile, Edel Hernandez of the Medical
Action Group (MAG) said that total
prevention and cure for HIV/AIDs,
tuberculosis (TB) and malaria are still
far on the horizon. The shadow report on
infectious diseases revealed a total gap
of about P178.8 million per year
required to finance TB control; and a
projected 11- year P15 billion financing
gap for malaria.
Meanwhile, writers on environmental
sustainability said that the current
MTPDP is the most glaring policy
inconsistency with regard to ensuring
environmental sustainability (MDG7). “It
prescribes a business as usual attitude
in environment and natural resources
management. It is clearly uninformed of
the realities and challenges of climate
change,” said Jonathan Ronquillo of the
La Liga Policy Institute.
The writers reported that mining took up
67 percent of the budget of the
Department of Environment and Natural
Resources (DENR), while funding
allocations for protected areas,
biodiversity conservation, reforestation
and implementation of environmental laws
are either erratic, low or completely
without allocations.
Jessica Cantos, convenor of Rice Watch
Action Network and lead writer on global
partnerships for development, said that
trade, debt and aid have all worked to
exacerbate rather than alleviate poverty
and unemployment in the Philippines.
Cantos called for debt relief to
countries where government revenues
cannot meet MDG financing needs. “Since
2000, the nation has been saddled with
debts more than the combined borrowings
of the three preceding regimes. It is
time to do away with the traditional
debt ratios that create an illusion that
a country has the capacity to service
its debt and at the same time develop,”
she said.
The Shadow Report also featured the
report by people in Mindanao. “The
government report attributed this
situation to the conflicts and peace and
order problem. What is not said is that
several of these poorest regions,
provinces and towns are also host to
large plantations and mining enclaves,”
Serrano said.
”Approximately 40 percent of the AFP
annual budget spent on war in Mindanao
in 1970-1996 could have built thousands
of farm to market, roads, classrooms,
clinics, irrigation systems and other
socio-economic infrastructure,” said
Jolly Lais of Assalam, lead writer on
the plight of the Bangsa Moro people.
Serrano said that what is needed is for
the budget to support an MDG catch up
plan that focus on where the country is
lagging behind—poverty, education and
maternal health. “The national budgets
beginning 2011 until 2015 must be MDG-dedicated.
The General Appropriations Acts (GAAs)
to be enacted for those years should be
pre-audited for their MDG-sensitivity,”
Serrano said.
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