Zero budget for state forces

It looks like the Duterte government is set to spend huge amounts of money for its military funding despite the countless human rights violations and the continuing impunity perpetrated by the state forces.

While the Duterte government deprioritizes spending on basic social services including health and education, the Department of National Defense (DND) as well as the Philippine National Police (PNP) enjoy 30 percent to 34 percent increase in their 2019 national budget. This is unacceptable.

The regressive taxes collected even from the very poor Filipinos will be allocated to fund institutions and programs that are notorious child rights violators.

According to the data of Save Our Schools Network, military attacks on Lumad community schools is the one of the worse common crimes committed by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in Mindanao.

In 2018, there are already 18 incidents of military attacks on schools recorded by Save Our Schools Mindanao. It has affected 4,068 individuals, 1,338 students, and 76 teachers.

These violations are observed to increase immediately after Duterte declared martial law in Mindanao and threatened to bomb Lumad schools in 2017.

The huge military funding will clearly result to further human rights violations and the prolonged impunity under Duterte’s regime. This means that more Lumad people will be killed and tagged as terrorists and more bombs to be dropped on civilian communities.

Salinlahi has recently launched the

Bata Bantay Budget Network to push for a child-friendly budgeting.

The network is not just pushing for the children’s interest but will also monitor how the government spends money that is supposedly utilized for the advancement of children’s rights and welfare.--Eule Rico Bonganay, Salinlahi Alliance for Children’s Concerns