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Filipino children voluntarily join the Communist Party of the
Philippines-New People’s Army because they find it credible, a
Unicef-commissioned study found. The same study revealed that the
Armed Forces of the Philippines systematically targets children,
women and other civilians in areas with armed conflict. Dr. Nicholas
Alipui, Unicef Country Representative admitted that the study was
biased – the researchers had failed to get the side of the AFP—yet
he believed that the report was a way of letting the children’s
voices be heard (The Manila Times, December 6, 2007).
Maybe Dr. Alipui isn’t aware that both Ibon
Foundation, the research organization commissioned by Unicef to do
the study, and the Children’s Rehabilitation Center , an NGO that
was the source of much of the data, belong to the same movement as
the CPP-NPA. In other words, the findings of the study—welcomed by
no less than CPP-NPA spokesperson Roger Rosal—that the CPP-NPA is
credible, that the AFP is a human rights violator, and that minors
are joining the CPP-NPA out of conviction, should not come as a
surprise.
The Philippines has ratified not only the
Convention on the Rights of the Child but also the convention’s
protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict. This
protocol condemns “with the gravest concern the recruitment,
training and use within and across national borders of children in
hostilities by armed groups distinct from armed forces of a State,
and [recognizes] the responsibility of those who recruit, train and
use children in this regard.”
The 2006 Country Report on Human Rights
Practices of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor of the
U.S. State Department found that the “NPA claimed that it assigned
persons 15 to 18 years of age to self defense and noncombatant
duties; however, there were reports that the NPA continued to use
minors in combat. … In the last several years, the AFP on numerous
occasions captured or killed NPA fighters who turned out to be
minors.” A few days ago, a 15-year-old member of the NPA
surrendered to authorities in Catanduanes. In 2005, the army killed
a 15-year-old female combatant in an encounter in Leyte. An
18-year-old one was captured. Last year, a 19-year-old male
combatant was slain in an encounter in Nueva Ecija. He was recruited
when he was 16. The list is long.
Notwithstanding these facts, Ibon echoes the
official NPA line that the minors were not used as combatants.
Unicef, however, defines child soldier as “any person below 18
years of age who is or has been recruited or used by an armed force
or group in any capacity, including but not limited to, children
used as fighters, cooks, porters, messengers, spies, or for sexual
purposes. [Child soldier] does not only refer to a child who is or
has taken a direct part in hostilities” (Free Children From War
Conference).
Mr. Rosal is calling on organizations that
defend children’s and women’s rights “to actively expose and
oppose state-inflicted violations of human rights, especially
children’s rights.” In line with this, Mr. Fidel Agcaoili of the
National Democratic Front wrote Mr. Alex Wargo of the Office of the
Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Children
Affected by Armed Conflict and Mr. Stephane Pichette of Unicef for
them to investigate alleged cases of illegal arrest of children.
One of the cases involves an eight-year-old girl
who was abandoned by her parents. The girl’s father, with a
pending warrant of arrest for his participation in the ambush and
murder of three soldiers in Tuburan, Cebu, on October 15, 2005, left
the girl with a neighbor and disappeared. The mother is presumed to
have joined him. The girl was then brought to Tuburan local
government by a former member of the NPA, now a staff of a municipal
councilor. Mr. Agcaoili refers to this lady as a “military
agent.” The girl was interviewed by the military and the social
workers. Eventually a Karapatan lawyer showed up with an aunt of the
girl and they took custody of her.
Unicef’s mandate is to protect children and
promote their rights. It is a tragedy that the organization funded a
study that is nothing but a tool to defend and legitimize the
NPA’s continued recruitment of minors and exposure of children to
physical danger and abandonment.
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