Getting children off the front line in Philippines’ drug war

There are no official figures but according to the Children’s Legal Rights and Development Centre and the Network Against Killings in the Philippines, at least 29 minors were killed by unknown assailants or by police between July and November 2016 alone.
The story of Michael Jayson Diaz, 16, is not untypical. Impoverished, from a broken family, caught five times for theft and other offences, Diaz was a drug user and pusher. His stepmother and grandmother found his broken body, earlier discovered stuffed in a sack, in a funeral home – stabbed with an ice-pick 16 times in the head, neck and chest. 
Then there’s Matthew, 13, who dropped out of school to sell methamphetamine in order to survive, and was arrested in August. “The police officer told me to run, so I ran very fast. I thought he was letting me go. But he shot me. I was knocked out,” Matthew said. He was held for days without charges.
Then there were those caught in the crossfire, such as high school student Emmanuel Lorica, killed in a Pasig evacuation centre, or 5-year-old Danica May Garcia, fatally shot by gunmen targeting her grandfather in Dagupan City.
Drug dealers use children because by Philippine law they cannot be charged with crimes. How to stop the drug trade that employs children? The startling answer, according to House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and his lieutenants, is to lower the age of criminal liability from 15 to 9.
Alvarez has proposed the Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility Act, which seeks to do away with “the pampering of youthful offenders who commit crimes knowing they can get away with it”.
Official figures since July 2016 – when President Rodrigo Duterte took office – to January show that 26,415 minors have surrendered to police in the course of the war on drugs. Only 299 of them have been identified as selling drugs and 131 as delivering drugs. But a stunning 25,985 are users. The majority – 8,821 – are first-time offenders, and only 557 are repeat offenders. By December 2016, 407 minors had been detained. 
The consensus among experts is that incarcerating young offenders does not actually turn them into law abiders. And not all Filipino jails have facilities to seclude minors, Bureau of Jails chief Serafin Barretto has admitted. He adds: “Most often, they are mixed with the others and are given the same interventions. The jail opens children to the idea that drugs could be a bigger illegal trade inside the prison. If before they were mere drug runners, now they realise there’s more money in drugs.”
Chief Inspector Maimona Macasasa, spokesperson of the Police Women and Children’s Protection Unit, has warned officers that they are not supposed to harm children, even those in conflict with the law. Young lawbreakers should be considered “rescued individuals” and need to be turned over to social workers within eight hours of arrest, she says. But are all cops aware of this? Or if they are, do they care?
The bottom line is the children’s impoverished condition. If this crisis is to be solved in the long term, the root causes of grinding poverty need to be tackled. Empower parents by providing them with jobs to keep body and soul together, and chances are good that their children will be off the streets and in school. With education and empowerment, and an overhaul of police perspectives, one battle is half-won.