Church seeks humanitarian response vs poverty

MANILA, Philippines — With almost 90 percent of those who fall in “extreme poverty” in Southeast Asia living in Indonesia and the Philippines, the Catholic Church is calling for a better humanitarian response to combat poverty through its AlayKapwa program.

“Over one-half of the world’s population (more than three billion people are) living in extreme poverty. The pope’s initiative to honor the poor is both a challenge and a celebration,” said Caceres Archbishop Rolando Tria Tirona, director of National Secretariat on Social Action (NASSA)/Caritas Philippines.

He said World Day of the Poor last Nov. 19 was essentially a time for #AlayKapwa, when people are asked to “offer and empty ourselves for the sake of our neighbors.”

“The initiative is a challenge for us Christians to be mindful of our actions towards the less fortunate, the underprivileged, the vulnerable and marginalized. Let us examine how our words and inactions affect those without voice and power,” said Tirona.

In the country, farmers, fisherfolk and children, or 21.9 million Filipinos, consistently are the poorest sectors, according to the 2017 poverty report of the Philippine Statistics Authority.

“We cannot continue to be blinded by this injustice. That is why NASSA/Caritas Philippines strives to strengthen its advocacy for the integration of humanitarian responses and development programming, just like what we are doing now in Marawi,” said NASSA executive secretary Fr. Edwin Gariguez.

The poor should not be treated as “beggars of our assistance,” said Gariguez. “They should be regarded with dignity, with the same importance we give ourselves.”

He added that the government should improve the delivery of services by “doing away with dole-out mentality and by engaging the most vulnerable during decision and policy-making.”

“It cannot be business as usual when dealing with our poor brothers and sisters. The government and the church must combine their resources to truly improve (the plight of the poor). We can start by establishing better coordination lines during disaster response and by being more accountable to our people,” he said.

The observance of the 1st World Day of the Poor coincided with the publication of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations-China-United Nations Development Program Report on Financing the Sustainable Development Goals in ASEAN: Strengthening Integrated National Financing Frameworks to Deliver the 2030 Agenda.

It showed that while extreme poverty has fallen across the region from 17 percent in 2005 to seven percent in 2013, many of the working poor remained vulnerable to falling back into poverty.

An estimated 36 million people in the region still live below the international poverty line, with almost 90 percent of them living in Indonesia and the Philippines, the report said.