“The relatively encouraging national-country level data on the rate of progress of the Philippines in the attainment of the MDGs contrasts with the reality at the sub-national level, thereby obscuring disparities and inequalities and creating a false sense of inclusive progress,” UN Resident Coordinator Jacqueline Babcock said.
The Philippines, being a UN-member, is a signatory to the Millennium Declaration, which commits nations to a global partnership to reduce poverty by 2015.
Babcock noted that five years before the deadline, the Philippines still has a low probability of attaining the goals that relate to primary education, maternal health and reducing HIV/AIDS incidence.
This was confirmed by Joseph Gloria of the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM), who said the Philippines “still has the same faces of poverty as in 1990 or 2000, more so in 2010.”
Gloria, PRRM assistant vice president, cited as example Agusan del Sur, one of the pilot MDG areas that remained among the top 20 poorest provinces, with a poverty incidence of 48.7 percent in 2006. Also in the top 20 is Sarangani, with a poverty incidence of 44.8 percent.
Nonetheless, only these two of nine pilot areas remained on the list of poorest provinces, Gloria’s report on Wednesday at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, showed.
But Babcock, while noting that the purchasing power of Filipinos increased from 2001 to 2009, urged to look “past these numbers…aggregate economic growth does not reflect social injustices.”
A statement quoted her as saying that while poverty index went down from 45.3 percent in 1991 to 26.5 percent in 2009, the actual number of poor Filipinos increased from 28.1 million in 1991 to 30 million last year.
These poor, according to Gloria, are far from Metro Manila, are landless, in coconut and fishing communities, female, and mostly Muslim or members of indigenous tribes.
“The poorest provinces are in serious risk of not meeting most of the targets set for 2015 unless decisive actions are taken to break through and accelerate the pace of MDG achievement. It is the same regions that have stagnated with regards to MDG achievement,” Babcock said.
