“It has been days already like this, the baby would often stop breathing. But just when we think he is dead, he would come back to life,” says a woman in the adjoining makeshift shelter.

Meriam rouses herself from sleep, surprised to see a group of journalists crowding around their packed quarters inside a market stall here turned evacuation center in poblacion Munai.

Cradling him in her arms, she gently taps the baby’s cheeks several times to wake him up, as if checking whether there remains life within the little bundle. The baby remained motionless.

“The baby is dead,” someone frantically shouted. The crowd fell silent, waiting with bated breath, some with tears in their eyes. 

Baby Hamda is just 28 days old. Ever since the day he was born in early October inside the Munai evacuation camp, “nag-aagaw buhay siya lagi,” caught in a constant struggle between life and death, says the woman in the adjoining makeshift.

But just as all seemed without hope, the baby suddenly stirs back to life, breathing once again.

Everyone heaves a sigh of relief.  Journalists click on their cameras to capture what seemed to be a moment of light prevailing over death’s shadows.

Then, unexpectedly, the baby seems to go lifeless again. 

“We could not just watch and wait for him to die here,” an anxious voice exclaims.

It is the voice of Fr. Eduardo “Ponpon” Vasquez, head of I-watch, the video documentation arm of the Oblate Media and a GMA-7 stringer, who is then taking footage of the ongoing drama. 

Vasquez was with a team of journalists who was going around evacuation centers from North Cotabato to Maguindanao to Lanao del Sur and now, on their fourth day on the road and the last leg, here in Lanao del Norte. The media tour from October 27 to 31 was hosted by the Mindanao Peoples Caucus.

While it was always the stories of dying children that gripped them wherever they go, nothing is as compelling as the stark image of Baby Hamda withering gradually before their eyes. For the team that included veteran photojournalist Rene Lumawag who was the first to chance upon the baby, it is time to lay down their pens and cameras. 

“We’re bringing him to the hospital. Any moment now he will die,” said Vasquez who brought the mother and baby in his pick-up joining a four-vehicle convoy led by MindaNews.

The baby was first brought to a hospital in Kauswagan, Lanao del Norte but had to be transferred to Iligan City for better facilities upon the advice of the attending doctor who suspected the baby to be suffering from severe pneumonia.

Baby Hamda at the Kauswagan District Hospital. MindaNews photo by Rene B. Lumawag

“He only has a 50-50 chance of survival,” said Dr. Arman Colao of the Kauswagan district hospital

Many not as fortunate

While a miracle may have saved Baby Hamda’s life that day, many other infants and children in about 150 evacuation centers scattered all over Central Mindanao were not as fortunate.

As the three-month-old military offensives against three out of 16 base commands of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) drag on,  the war is already exacting a heavy toll on civilians particularly children.  

Already, there are 56 internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have died in Maguindanao and Shariff Kabunsuan, 32 of whom due to illness and 18 from actual encounters, according to the Department of Health in the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (DOH-ARMM) in a November 4 report.

About 21 of the reported deaths caused by illness were ages five years old and below. Diarrhea is the number one leading cause of death among IDPs.

At the Munai evacuation center here alone, 11 evacuees have already died since August 18, seven of them children, mostly due to pneumonia and measles, according to Raissa Ariraya, a midwife at the Munai Municipal Health Center here.

Inside the health center here, among those confined were children evacuees Emran Balabagan, 7, from Sitio Dilabagen West, Barangay Bacolod and Suraini
Banglan, 1, from Barangay Ramayen, who were being treated for nausea, diarrhea and fever.

But seven imams (religious leaders) said that there were already 30 deaths since evacuations started on August 18. They also said that out of 26 barangays in Munai, 21 of them are now “ghost towns” due to military offensives in pursuit of MILF renegade commander Abdurahman Macapaar alias Kumander Bravo.

In Datu Piang and Mamasapano, Maguindanao, Mindanews earlier reported that at least 43 evacuees have already died, 23 of them children, citing records from the town hall and the rural health unit.

While at Datu Piang poblacion during the first leg of the media tour on October 27, Mindanews chanced upon 16-year-old Raiz Adteg who was carrying an umbrella over the body of his baby sister, one-year-old Anariza, who died that morning at the plaza turned evacuation center. 

Raiz was on his way to bury Anariza whose body was wrapped in a “malong” and a mat tied on two bamboo poles carried by his uncle and cousin. He said that they had no money to buy medicine that was why his baby sister died.

At a gazebo inside the Datu Piang town plaza, a father shared his story, on how he lost his only two children, Jamir, 3, and Jamiha, 1. Merin Hardeng from Barangay Irian, Datu Saudi Ampatuan recalled that the kids had been sick and had already been treated. But on the third day, Jamir died. On the following day, they also lost the baby girl, Jamiha, just when the family came home from burying Jamir.

Lawyer Zainudin Malang, director of the MoroLaw Center who joined the journalists in the five-day tour, called on international humanitarian organizations such as the International Committee on the Red Cross to “immediately attend to dying infants and children.”

Malang asserted that there should also be strict observance of the United Nation’s High Commission on Human Rights Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement where IDPs should be provided “safety, nutrition, health and hygiene and that members of the same family should not be separated.”

Worried about the looming humanitarian crisis, Malang bared plans among Moro CSOs to establish a refugee, human rights and media secretariate to monitor the worsening plight of IDPs and rising number of human rights violations.

The Amnesty International (AI) reported that there are already about 610,000 people displaced in the last two months of fighting in Mindanao. The report entitled “Shattered Peace in Mindanao: The Human Cost of Conflict in the Philippines” was released late October.

Mindanao-wide CSOs have also called on the United Nations to intervene and put the peace process between the Philippine government and MILF back on track to stop the war. 

The peace process collapsed when the  Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) was supposed to have been formally signed on August 5 in Putrajaya, Malaysia. by the chairs of the government and the MILF peace panels. A temporary restraining order issued by the Supreme Court on August 4 however stopped the government peace panel chair and the Foreign Affairs secretary from signing. On October 14, the Supreme Court voted 8-7 declaring the MOA-AD unconstitutional.

Dwight Zabala, project consultant of the UNICEF’s Mindanao Desk based in Cotabato City, said that children IDPs should be accorded the rights to adequate food, health, play, leisure and other rights mandated under the UN Convention on the Rights of Children.

“They should also be protected from abuse, neglect and exploitation,” he added.

Zabala said that in response to the humanitarian crisis, they have set up a “child protection network” in Central Mindanao composed of 10 local and international non-government organizations. The network includes Mindanao Tulong Bakwet, Kadtuntaya Foundation Inc., Nonviolent Peaceforce, United Youth for Peace and Development (UNYPAD), United Youth of the Philippines (UNYPHIL)-Women, Oblates of Mary Immaculate-Integrated Rehabilitation Program (OMI-IRP), KAWAGIB Moro Human Rights Organization, Bangsamoro Development Agency (BDA), and Community and Family Services International (CFSI).

The network is engaged in monitoring and documentation of grave child rights violations in situations of armed conflict including the killings of children. The monitoring system is in accordance with the UN Security Council Resolution 1612 passed in 2005.

Among the killings that had been documented were the September 8 bombing in Datu Piang, Maguindanao that killed four children - Bailyn, 9; Zukarudin, 7; Adtayan, 5 and Faidza, 2 – of the Manuggal-Mandi family. A bomb dropped from a military  helicopter exploded near the boat they were riding in Barangay Butalo, Datu Piang, Maguindanao that also killed their father and 18-year-old pregnant sister, Aida.

The child protection network also set in place a system of identification and registration of separate and unaccompanied children caught in the conflict.

As for Baby Hamda, doctors have pronounced him out of danger and he is now back at the Munai evacuation center, a week after journalists intervened and brought him to the hospital on October 30.  

But once back inside evacuation centers, sick IDP children however recover slowly even after receiving treatment due to renewed exposure to health hazards, according to a DOH-ARMM report.     

Until perhaps Baby Hamda finally gets home, the struggle to survive

him and countless more other children evacuees, continues. (Charina Sanz/MindaNews)