Revitalizing South-South Cooperation between BARMM and Indonesia
AFTER more than two years of hiatus from holding faceto-face didactic training, field exposure, action planning and implementation because of the pandemic, the South-South Cooperation (SSC) program of Indonesia and the Philippines has resumed these activities by sending a new group of Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) high-level officials and technical staff, officials of the Commission on Population (PopCom) Central office and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and an NGO (nongovernment organization) representative to Bandung in West Java, Indonesia from Nov. 28 to Dec. 2, 2022.
This group participated in a program of activities that was organized by the Badan Kependudukan dan Keluarga Berencana Nasional (BKKBN) or the National Population and Family Planning Board.
The SSC program was launched over a decade ago, after the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) by the heads of the two main SSC partners, the BKKBN and the PopCom, in Manila on Aug. 30, 2012. Sharing of good practices in family planning (FP), adolescent reproductive health (ARH) and decentralization of FP services were the partners’ main areas for partnership. The MoU signing was witnessed by representatives of UNFPA Indonesia and Philippine country offices, the SSC’s development partner. The UNFPA has a global SSC program that involves its country offices. Indonesia, on the other hand, has a long-standing SSC program that began in 1955 after the famous Asia-Africa conference in Bandung. This program is coordinated and monitored by its Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of State, and it is implemented by the different ministries with the aim of promoting international partnerships to attain global sustainable goals. Indonesia’s foreign affairs and state ministries coordinate with the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs regarding this bilateral program.
The BKKBN is known for its successful FP program. Its Center for International Training and Collaboration has organized many SSC activities since the 1980s, allowing several FP program officers and executives from 95 countries to go to Indonesia and share their experiences and learn new strategies in population management and family planning.
Its partnership with Muslim religious leaders (MRLs) is an important factor in its successful implementation of the country’s family planning program.
Because of cultural similarities, the partner agencies chose to focus their activities on the defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), now known as the BARMM where a large segment of Filipino Moros resides. The ARMM had a functioning Darul Ifta (Islamic Advisory Council) that formulated the 2003 National Fatwa (a legal opinion) on RH and FP.
Despite this progressive fatwa, the region then had dismal health and human development indices as a resuly of poverty, natural disasters andopolitical/internal conflict. The MoU was effective for five years (2012-2017), but it was extended twice (2018-2022 and 2023-2027).
Training workshops, field exposure, action plan development and implementation, and internships are the SSC’s activities. Financial support has been provided by the two countries and the UNFPA. National bi-annual meetings have been held involving each country’s technical working groups to assess and modify the partners’ activities and plans.
From 2012 until 2019, four groups from the BARMM went to Indonesia: 1) five pilot municipal teams (each team comprised a mayor, a Muslim religious leader and a health officer) from five provinces trained on FP in Islamic context; 2) some Darul Ifta MRLs joined the global SSC strategic partnerships for FP training among faith-based organizations; 3) a group of officials from BARMM provinces and other local government units observed decentralized governance and FP in one province; and 4) three groups of youth leaders observed ARH programs in three selected provinces.
The FP promotion by the pilot municipal teams was found to be effective, and it was agreed that province-wide implementation of this strategy would be carried out before the pandemic.
The MRLs’ participation in the SSC led to the crafting of the fatwa “The Model Family in Islam” in 2015, which emphasized the importance of the family, marriage and pre-marriage counseling and covered sensitive issues about early marriage, forced marriage and gender-based violence. In 2018, the UNFPA’s Global SSC awarded UNFPA Philippines for having the best SSC program worldwide. Dr. Kadil Jojo Sinolinding, the SSC’s Technical Working Group chairman and the secretary of the defunct ARMM Department of Health in tandem with the UNFPA’s assistant representative, Dr. Rena Dona (now deputy representative in Papua New Guinea), ably presented the SSC program, accomplishments and challenges at the UNFPA’s New York headquarters.
Some MRLs in partnership with PopCom Region 12 and the BARMM wrote and launched virtually in 2021 the Comprehensive Gender and Health Education for Youth (CGHEY) instructional modules that are intended for grade and secondary school teachers in the region.
The SSC sent the following Indonesian groups to the Philippines: 1) one youth group was exposed to the implementation of ARH programs in communities and schools in Metro Manila and in Panay island’s provinces; 2) another Indonesian youth group participated in a training workshop that was conducted by the Family Planning Organization of the Philippines and the UNFPA, on the tools and strategies of engaging the Filipino youth during humanitarian emergencies; 3) two groups of provincial and BKKBN officials observed some decentralized local government units and their FP programs; and 4) two groups of local officials, BKKBN and health officials attended the Bridging Leadership in Health Governance training workshop that was conducted by Zuellig Family Foundation (ZFF). Because the ZFF’s health change model was assessed as relevant for Indonesian local government leaders, some ZFF’s senior trainers were invited by the BKKBN to Indonesia and had conducted similar training workshops for local government and BKKBN officials.
Sending a new group of BARMM officials and technical personnel to Indonesia in late November and early December 2022 is a strong indication of the various agencies’ interest to sustain and expand the SSC program in the region. Led by Mohajirin Ali, director general of the Bangsamoro Planning and Development Authority (PPDA), the 10 participants were from different ministries particularly from Health, Interior and Local Government, Social Services and Development, and Basic, Higher and Technical Education, and from the region’s Youth Commission, Women’s Commission, interim Population and Development Office, Darul-Ifta (now a part of the BARMM’s transition government), and Mindanao Organization for Social and Economic Progress (an NGO).
The BKKBN introduced the BARMM team to its programs on family planning, its partnership with MRLs and the ARH program in the country, in the pesantren (Islamic boarding school) and in a public school. The team was impressed by the public school’s adolescent-friendly space and the services of a counseling center to students. They also learned about the inclusion of nutrition in the ARH program, particularly the provision of iron supplements to female students because many adolescent girls are reportedly diagnosed as anemic. Perkumpulan Keluarga Berencana Indonesia or the Indonesian FP Association, an NGO that led the FP movement, presented its ARH program to the BARMM team, including its innovative approaches and tools for different segments of the youth population. The team also observed the conduct of a premarriage counseling (PMC) session for Muslims in a sub-district of the Office for Religious Affairs.
They learned that the comprehensive PMC covered FP in Islam, values and other vital aspects of marriage and childcare for soonto-marry couples. They were taken to a community health center, which looked like a small wellequipped hospital that provided comprehensive FP and other primary health care services.
The BARMM team shared lessons learned from the BKKBN five-day program and presented an action plan, which would be implemented in 2023. Revisiting the CGHEY and the inclusion of the PMC in the BARMM are the two main activities of the group’s action plan. Although the Philippine government requires all engaged couples to go through a PMC prior to issuance of a marriage license, this is not compulsory in the BARMM. These two SSC activities are envisioned to become a part of the region’s forthcoming Population and Development Office (PDO), a unit which falls under the PPDA. A bill creating the PDO has reportedly passed the first reading at the Bangsamoro parliament. It is sponsored by Dr. Jojo Sinolinding, now a member of the parliament.
The PDO’s establishment and the involvement of various ministries indicate the further institutionalization of the SSC activities in the BARMM. Dr. Marjanie Macasalong, the BYC chairman who joined the BARMM team’s exposure to the BKKBN’s program, gave the following comments on BYC’s Facebook page: “We have a strong influence on the youth community, and this experience [has] served as our wake-up call to take the best in our capacity to ensure that [the] Bangsamoro youth are provided with programs that address youth issues such as high cases of child marriage, premarital sex and even violence against women and children.”