Mary Racelis' 2009 Wrap-up

For those of you who didn't know her, Mary Racelis was the country representative in Manila, Philippines in 1992-1997. Here is a wrap-up of her past year.

As Christmas and the end of the year draw near, let me update you on my 2009.

If there is one theme that encompasses my major concerns, it would be defending the rights of marginalized groups. My activities this year have focused on promoting urban poor informal settlers' right to live in the city and get basic services like water, sanitation, and education along with secure land tenure, food, employment, and participation in governance. Alternate thrusts entail women's and parents' rights to reproductive health services including modern contraception, and children's and adolescents' rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The latter includes making their voices heard as to whether they are actually benefiting from these rights.

The first set – poor urbanites' right to the city – exploded on the scene in the wake of the massive September flooding in Metro Manila. All sectors of the population were affected – mainly the urban poor living along creeks, rivers, Laguna Lake and coastal shores, but also middle and upper class communities located in low-lying gated areas. Many people died in the raging currents that swept through their communities and from the diseases that attacked them afterwards. Thousands waited out the deluge perched on the roofs of their houses or crowded in nearby schools and evacuation centers.

The struggle in which I was engaged erupted in the days following the storm. Most of the 18,000 poor families displaced along the waterways were returning to their home sites to rebuild their houses and restore their earning opportunities. Government, however, decreed that affected people could not return to their “danger zone” neighborhoods and must instead accept relocation to sites 40 to 60 km outside the city. Riverside dwellers protested, pointing out that distant resettlement posed even greater dangers from the lack of employment. They were thus rebuilding onsite because living in these in-city areas enabled them to survive the daily emergencies of poverty.

I was among a group of NGOs and academics which championed informal settlers' rights to remain in the city. At the same time, recognizing that the waterways offered poor environments for families, we insisted that the government implement existing laws that entitle them to space and social housing in the city, preferably nearby. My particular part in that multi-partner advocacy was to publish two articles in the Philippine Daily Inquirer which explained the logic of poor urbanites' choices. The articles later formed the basis of a Pastoral Letter from the Metro Manila bishops read at Sunday masses on the storm victims' rights as human beings and urban workers to decent housing and employment in the city. It's certainly rewarding to help generate genuine social reform.

On women's and parents' rights, I have long been among those advocating the passage of the Bill on reproductive health still languishing in Congress. My advocacy emphasizes the need to listen to usually silenced poor women, about half a million of whom engage in unsafe and illegal abortions largely because they lack access to modern family planning information and services including contraception. We are making the point that Catholics can support the RH Bill in good conscience. But the opposition is strong.

The third element involves child rights. Here I have been engaged with research partner, Marichi Castro Guevara, in a study on how best to help poor children and youth assess the rights available (or not) to them. This effort took us to UNICEF workshops in Rio de Janeiro in March and Rome in November.

A major undertaking over most of the year was an evaluation of land acquisition strategies by the urban poor and their NGO partners commissioned by Misereor, the German bishops donor organization. Malou Rebullida of the University of the Philippines Political Science Department and I developed with six other researchers community case studies in large Philippine cities. At the same time, a UP graduate student and I have initiated a study on The Everyday Lives of Urban Poor Youth in an informal settlement. Adolescents 15-17 and young adults 18-24 make up this usually left-out group.

All these experiences come together in my Urban Anthropology graduate class at UP this semester. My students are currently in the field interviewing victims of the flood to see how waterway dwellers' usual responses to frequent floods fared during the deluge of September, and what they felt was needed to address this evidence of climate change.

Other travels took me to Tokyo for a development forum, London for an urban seminar, Laos for an annual team effort at assessing the social impact of the Nam Theun 2 dam on affected upland communities.. Exciting stuff! It's not all work, though. Marichi and I combined our seminars abroad with delightful forays into the tourist world. We strolled on the beach at Ipanema, Rio, explored awesome Angkor Wat in Cambodia, crawled through the Viet Cong tunnels near Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, stood with hundreds of others in St. Peter's Square, rosaries dangling from our arms, to receive Pope Benedict's blessings, and gazed at paintings galore at the Louvre and Musee d'Orsay during our four day Paris holiday en route Manila from Rio.

Through all this, I manage to keep in close touch not only with my Manila-based family, but also my New York family. Life goes on and I surely lead a blessed one. Season's greetings. Have a great 2010!