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PIKIT, North Cotabato: Hiding under the shade of a
makeshift stage, 13-year-old Denilda Abdul finishes the last
spoonful of her corn-soya porridge and quickly lines up for another
serving.
Her traditional Muslim headscarf
does not hide her emaciated frame and slightly bulging eyes, signs
of early malnutrition common among children in remote villages of
Mindanao.
“This is very good,” she said
between spoonfuls of the brown, sticky mixture distributed by the
UN’s World Food Programme in the small farming village of
Kalakacan.
“It’s not chicken or fish,
but it fills me up just the same.”
She is just one of more than one
million people who rely daily on food from the World Food Programme
in Mindanao, the southern Philippine island which has been ravaged
for more than 30 years by a Muslim separatist rebellion and
interclan feuding.
Other students silently eat their
porridge, sweat trickling down their faces despite a gentle breeze
blowing across from empty corn and rice fields nearby.
Mothers mingle in the background
and talk of fighting between the military and separatist Moro
Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) that has wrought havoc on hundreds
of farming communities like this and forced thousands of families
into squalid refugee camps.
“Hunger is a nagging concern
for the people in Mindanao,” World Food Programme country chief
Valerie Guarnieri told Agence France-Presse.
Despite a five-year ceasefire
between the government and the MILF, clashes erupt randomly and
deadly feuding between rival families and militant Muslim groups
remain a problem.
It also disrupts farming and
other jobs, and prevents children attending school, Guarnieri said.
The conflict has led to
malnutrition levels that are “quite alarming in a country of the
economic status of the Philippines,” she said.
“Nothing in Mindanao can be
divorced from the conflict because there’s an area that should be
the breadbasket of the Philippines, that should be the economic
lifebuoy for the country and yet because of the conflict, it
doesn’t get the sort of investment, either public or private that
would allow it to fulfill its potential,” Guarnieri said.
“They are living day to day and
they are trying to supplement their farming. These activities are
clearly disrupted when they are forced to move to another area. It
makes what’s already quite a difficult life all the harder,” she
said.
Various efforts have been made by
government and UN agencies to document the exact number of
displaced, but because the camps are often temporary and villagers
often return to their homes to retrieve belongings no actual figure
has been established.
For sure, Guarnieri said, the
figure runs in the hundreds of thousands, with her agency alone
delivering between 2,000 and 3,000 tons of food every month last
year to 1.1 million of Mindanao’s 16 million residents.
In December 2007 alone, more than
3,000 villagers from this town were displaced by days of fighting
before ceasefire monitors stepped in, according to local officials.
These refugees will continue to
depend on foreign aid to fend off starvation, Guarnieri said.
She said millions of dollars are
now pouring into Mindanao to support the peace process, “but very
little of that assistance goes directly to conflict-affected
households.”
Jesus Sacdalan, the local
governor, said large-scale fighting has stopped, although armed
conflict among local political warlords and Muslim clans persists.
“It has become relatively
peaceful. And our children are slowly returning to schools and
normal life,” he said. “We have local problems though about clan
fighting.”
Clan wars are more pertinent in
daily life here, with a recent study by the Asia Foundation
recording more than 3,800 deaths in recent years related to what is
known here as rido.
But this number is also likely to
fall if the government signs a peace deal with the MILF and
subsequently curbs unlicensed gun ownership, Sacdalan said.
“It’s critical that the
government and the MILF conclude a peace agreement as soon as
possible,” Guarnieri said.
That is expected to take a few
more years, with MILF chief Murad Ebrahim in a recent meeting with
his senior commanders in Mindanao saying he doubted a final peace
pact will be achieved before the end of President Gloria Arroyo’s
term in 2010.
“I don’t know when the food
supplies will last [until]. What I know is that we can’t rely on
dole-outs forever,” said Merlinda Apostol, a 42-year-old mother of
six, as she grasps a bright red food bowl.
--AFP
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