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Millennium Development Goals in The Philippines

School children in the Philippines

The Philippines is classed as a middle income country, but suffers major development problems. Commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has come under painful scrutiny with the publication of results of the 2006 Family Income and Expenditure Survey which show that poverty increased in the 3 years since the previous survey. This was a period in which the Philippines boasted success by conventional measures of economic growth and in which neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia took enormous strides in lifting people out of poverty. By contrast, extreme poverty (assessed by inability to buy sufficient food) in the Philippines increased from 13.5% to 14.6% between 2003 and 2006 whilst the broader measure of poverty (assessed by inability to buy food and other basic essentials) increased from 30.0% to 32.9%. These reverses raise doubts as to whether the respective 2015 MDG targets (12% and 22.5%) for these two measures of poverty can be met.

With over 7,000 islands, the Philippines has many geographic and infrastructural obstacles to creating uniform improvements in people’s lives. There is considerable regional diversity in human development, for example in Mindanao 50% of people live below the poverty line and 1.6 million are dependent on assistance from the World Food Programme. About 80% of poor families live in rural areas, typically small subsistence farmers, indigenous groups and fisherfolk. The government has identified modernisation of agriculture and fisheries as a key strategy for poverty reduction, with microfinance as the ideal mechanism.

Science class in the Philippines

The extent of poverty and its inertia may also explain another alarming setback for the MDG programme; net enrolment to primary education was close to 100% in 2000 but by 2005/06 had dropped to 84%. A further contributory factor may be the government’s inability to complete the construction of large numbers of new schools. A more positive and unusual statistic is that enrolment for girls is higher than for boys.

Philippine urban poor protest at MDG failures © Global Call to Action against Poverty

The government has integrated the MDGs into the Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) 2004-2010 but its underlying commitment is questioned in an unusually frank 2007 MDG Midterm Progress Report which observes that “expenditures for social and economic services as a percentage of the total budget had been declining for the past seven years”. The funding gap to achieve the Goals by 2015 is estimated at around $15 billion, a figure well beyond current resources. The report encourages discussion of innovative mechanisms to exchange the country’s substantial external debt for ringfenced MDG programmes.

Health in The Philippines

The high annual population growth rate of over 2% adds to the cost of poverty reduction. The government lacks a strategic approach to population, largely due to the influence of the Catholic church, the religion of over 80% of the population. Reproductive health services are available to only 50% of families and maternal mortality remains extremely high by regional standards, having reduced only to 162 per 100,000 births from 209 in 1993. The 2015 MDG target of 52 appears out of reach.

Anxiety that these shortcomings in government sexual health programmes might result in an explosion of HIV/AIDS has not been fulfilled. HIV prevalence is currently low in the Philippines and the government can afford to finance a programme to achieve universal access to treatment and care by 2009. However, one third of infections have been traced to returning migrant workers, a potential source which is notoriously difficult to control.

Health programmes in the Philippines have also succeeded in reducing the occurrence of many other diseases, including malaria, and MDG targets for infant and child mortality rates are likely to be achieved. However, there are two structural problems within the country which undermine progress. Firstly, the poor standard of nutrition amongst about half of the population, confirmed by the slow rate of progress towards the MDG targets for dietary intake and child weight. Secondly, the lack of health facilities and staff in rural areas - about 12% of qualified doctors left the country in 2006. Good health services are concentrated within cities where those employed by government and business are members of the National Health Insurance scheme. Just under 50% of the workforce is confined to informal employment and likely to be excluded from social services and welfare safety nets.

Climate Change in The Philippines

Slash and burn in the Philippines © VJ Toledo/WWF-Canon / WWF International

None of the poverty reduction or health improvement programmes in the Philippines takes any account of the impact of climate change. Yet at the 2007 Bali UN Climate Change Conference, Philippines was the highest placed country in a new Global Climate Risk Index. This recognised that during 2006 extreme weather events accounted for 3,000 deaths and widespread destruction by mudslides and typhoons. The country has always been prone to natural disasters and the prospect of increased frequency and intensity spurred Greenpeace to publish a special report on the impact of climate change in the Philippines. Apart from extreme weather, there is concern that increasing temperature will affect agricultural yields and food security, whilst rising sea levels threaten over 40 million people who live in coastal regions.

The government has responded by establishing the President’s Task Force on Climate Change which will consider mitigation as well as adaptation. For example, fatal landslides such as that in Leyte in early 2006 have been blamed on widespread deforestation, prompting the authorities to take rapid action against illegal loggers and to instigate massive tree replanting schemes.
Politics in The Philippines

Politics in the Philippines is based far more on personality than ideology. There is general consensus among the main political parties in terms of the social, political and economic structures. The president is typically widely supported at the beginning of a term of office. However, as new elections draw near, allegiances shift and parties fragment as people seek to gain new political patronage and power. The absence of strong political party institutions leaves the president vulnerable to popular unrest and coups, often with involvement of factions of the strong military. There are reported to have been no fewer than 12 attempted coups since 1996.

It was a display of “People’s Power” in 2001 that ousted President Joseph Estrada for corruption and elevated vice president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to the highest position, which she subsequently claimed more emphatically by winning a six year term in presidential elections in 2004. Claims of electoral fraud and corruption in these elections led to impeachment proceedings against the president in June 2005 and again in 2006, both however failing to overcome strong support for Arroyo in Congress, the lower house of parliament. True to form, Ms Arroyo has also been compelled to put down attempted coups, most recently in 2007.

The president should be safe from further impeachment attempts following parliamentary elections in 2007 which secured sufficient of her supporters in Congress. However the upper Senate is now packed with opponents which may constrain the passage of legislation. Evidence of vote-buying at these elections revives the reputation for cronyism and corruption at all levels of government, the military and the police, questioning the depth of Philippine democracy. Efforts to increase transparency and accountability are being implemented, but face many obstacles. For example, in 2007 Estrada was eventually convicted for extorting $80 million of public funds but was promptly granted a pardon by Ms Arroyo.

Civil society within the Philippines has been flourishing since the Marcos era, often working in close collaboration with government, and underpinned by a strong culture of volunteering. Community organisations, NGOs and international agencies are active on a range of issues including poverty alleviation, health, the environment and human rights.
Internal Conflict in The Philippines

Philippine soldiers

The diversity and disparities of the archipelago have prompted post independence communist and separatist movements to engage in internal armed conflict since the late 1960s, especially in the predominantly Muslim region of Mindanao. These groups have been responsible for 1700 deaths since 2000 and possibly 200,000 internal displacements each year. There have been alternating phases of government peace talks and all-out military campaigns against them. The secessionist group, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), reached a peace agreement in 1996 which awarded control over the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Renewed fighting in 2007 has led to demands for an extension to the ARMM for which negotiations are under way.

Another Mindanao group keen to establish a Muslim homeland, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), faced a heavy military campaign by government troops under President Estrada. Successive fighting and peace talks have continued under President Arroyo, with Malaysia heading an international monitoring group with a presence on the island. The government claims that its own fighting is targeted solely at the small but extremist organisation of Abu Sayyaf which is believed to have links to Al-Qaeda and the regional extremist group Jemmaah Islamiah. The objective is to stop members of Abu Sayyaf using the island of Jolo as a base for recruiting and training militants. There are inevitable misundertandings over identity and territory between these three groups, often disrupting a peace process. Long term prospects of disarming and reintegrating such long-established fighters are at best uncertain.

The Philippine military has been assisted by US equipment and personnel in combating this group which has continued even though relations with the US cooled following the withdrawal of Philippine troops from Iraq in 2004.
Human Rights in The Philippines

Hong Kong protest at killings of human rights activist in the Philippines © Asian Human Rights Commission

A fourth insurgent group, the military wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, known as the New People’s Army (NPA), has been denied the benefit of negotations since the government declared “all-out war” in 2006. The consequence was a wave of extra-judicial assassinations of left-wing activists, allied with apparent deficiencies of the judicial system to investigate these and other human rights violations. Protests that the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) were acting with impunity led to an internal Commission of Inquiry led by Justice José Melo and eventually to a report by the UN Special Rapporteur, Philip Alston. Professor Alston concluded that at least 100 people had been murdered since 2005 and that “the AFP remains in a state of almost total denial” with not one conviction.

In other respects the country’s human rights record has been improving in recent years. The independent Philippine Commission on Human Rights has been established and aspects of human rights are entering domestic law. In July 2006 the death penalty in the Philippines was abolished. At that time there were around 1,200 people on death row in the country. However, the new Human Security Act introduced in 2007 as a counter-terrorism measure has raised concerns that its vague definition of terrorism could enable the provisions to be invoked for political activity.

Press freedom is permitted by the constitution and the extensive Filipino press is known for its freedom to comment and speculate in many areas. However, investigative reporting into major crime and corruption is often criticised. It has led to the arrests of editors and the killing of 25 journalists since 2004.
The Economy in The Philippines

The Philippine economy follows the prescription of liberal open markets, privatisation of most industries and services, and membership of the World Trade Organisation. By traditional measures of growth, the economy has been reasonably successful, especially in recent years. Unemployment is officially reported as less than 8%, although underemployment accounts for a further 20%. However, free trade rules may have undermined domestic food production to the extent that the Philippines is now the world’s biggest importer of rice. As the crisis of sharply rising food prices takes hold, the government was unable to buy its required supplies of rice during the first quarter of 2008, the consequences of which remain uncertain.

As many as 8 million Filipinos are believed to be working abroad, one million having left in 2006 alone. Painful and often damaging family dislocation is the price paid for overseas remittances that are the largest source of foreign currency for the Philippine economy, contributing an estimated US$ 12.8 billion in 2006, almost 10% of GDP.



The OneWorld Philippines Guide was first published in this format in February 2005 with a text written by Volunteer Editor Tristan Burton

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