BARMM expands service programs for children, juveniles

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Officials shall maximize their implementation of two long-term intervention plans for children and juveniles in the Bangsamoro region, where various agencies and foreign benefactors are together addressing issues and concerns besetting both sectors.

Bangsamoro Social Services Minister Raissa Jajurie said on Saturday, May 24, that they just had a three-day strategic review of their Regional Plan of Action for Children (RPAC) and Comprehensive Regional Juvenile Intervention Program (CRJIP) and that strategies were then set to ensure that both are enforced extensively in all five provinces and three cities in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The discussions during the May 21 to 23, 2025 strategic planning and programs realignment workshop of the Ministry of Social Services and Development-BARMM delved on revisions of the RPAC and CRJIP for both to get comprehensively aligned with the national government’s frameworks for services for children and juveniles.

Hasim Guaimil, MSSD-BARMM’s director for programs and services, and Jajurie separately told reporters that their RPAC and CRJIP are focused on protecting the rights of children and juveniles and in ensuring their welfare and access to government services essential to their schooling, health care and other needs.

The MSSD-BARMM, the Ministry of Labor and Employment-BARMM and the International Labour Organization (ILO) of the United Nations are cooperating on projects meant to stop child labor and use of children as combatants in Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi and in the cities of Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato.

“We are doing our best, via our offices in the Bangsamoro provinces and cities, in taking care of children and juveniles in the local communities,” Jajurie said.

BARMM’s social services and labor and employment ministries and the ILO’s office in Cotabato City had rescued, via multi-sector interventions, 635 child laborers in Cotabato City and in different towns in Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur and in Lanao del Sur in the past 24 months.

“We are also preventing the use of children as combatants in some areas, condoned by the involvement of their clans in `rido’ triggered by land disputes, affronts to clan pride and honor and politics,” BARMM’s labor and Employment Minister, Muslimin Sema, said.

Rido is a generic term for clan war in all languages in the culturally-pluralistic communities in BARMM.

Units of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and  the Army's 6th Infantry Division covering Central Mindanao had separately settled  37 clan wars in different towns in BARMM since 2021. 

Sema and Jajurie had both said that they are grateful to the ILO and other international humanitarian entities helping push the programs of the BARMM government for children and juveniles forward.