(Editor’s Note: As part of Unicef Philippines’s 70th anniversary, the UN’s child-rights agency honors modern-day heroes committed to bringing a brighter future for the next generation of Filipinos. This is one such story.)
POL Moselina is a seasoned child-rights advocate. At 70, he continues to work with different organizations in pushing for the welfare of children and creating child-friendly environments.
Having grown up in a farming community, Pol’s views on ensuring children’s welfare was formed by what he saw as a boy.
“My father himself was a tenant all his life, despite land reform. I saw children drop out of school because of poverty, and the poverty was because of the tenancy issue,” he said.
After studying at Columban College in Olongapo City, where he pursued a bachelor’s degree in education and immersed himself in the social sciences, Pol found himself in academe. He eventually became dean of his alma mater in the early-1980s.
Pol caught the attention of organizations that work with children—and the ire of local officials—in 1979, when his master’s thesis “Olongapo’s Rest and Recreation Industry: A Sociological Analysis of Institutionalized Prostitution,” was published by the Philippine Sociological Review.
“In my thesis, I said that the city government was the pimp,” he said, adding that this got him into trouble with a local official who insisted that there were no sex workers in Olongapo.
“But I told him, ‘Don’t you know I worked for six months in night clubs?’ I did participant-observation study, so I knew what was happening. And that’s when I discovered minors were involved.”
Shortly after, he, along with Columban College faculty, students and volunteer administrators, piloted a community-based program for street children and the urban poor in Olongapo.
In 1984 Unicef sent Pol, along with other participants, to Brazil for a month long study tour on street children. The trip is widely acknowledged as the beginning of the UN agency’s street-children program in the Philippines.
“We saw later that street children were mainly the offspring of the urban poor. So that means, if you’d like to address the phenomenon, you should address the situation of the urban poor,” he said.
He and the other participants were asked to draft a proposal for addressing the street-children phenomenon upon their return. After they submitted the proposal, Pol was ready to go back to academe. But Unicef invited Pol to work with them as a consultant. He was then taken in as a project officer and later appointed Chief of Child Protection, a post he held until his early retirement in 2005.
In 1989 the Convention on Children’s Rights (CRC)—the landmark document that shifted the entire approach to child advocacy from focusing on their basic needs to recognizing their rights—was adopted. Unicef’s thrusts changed as well, focusing from child survival and development to human rights.
“We struggled with concepts. You only meet needs. But rights, you have to fulfill. When we say children’s rights, they’re entitled to those rights. It’s not enough to target so many percent of children, now you must target all children, because they are all entitled to these rights,” Pol said.
“So we engaged the Council for the Welfare of Children [CWC] to also help us develop. It was all done together—Unicef, government, nongovernmental organization partners, working to develop a child-protection system at various levels.”
Pol was also instrumental in starting the Children as Zones of Peace campaign, which called for a ceasefire in the conflict-ridden places of Mindanao to allow children living in the areas to be vaccinated. This, he said, was the biggest challenge he faced then.
After leaving Unicef for health reasons in 2005, Pol’s child advocacy continued. Among others, he helped organize a national consultation among religious leaders for the Unicef. This later led the different religious organizations to establish children’s ministries.
Pol has also been responsible for Unicef Philippines’s Strategic Intent Memo for 2010-2020, which sets the direction of the organization for the period. He also wrote for the government the third and fourth periodic reports on the implementation of CRC, and was tapped to draft the second and third Comprehensive Programs on Child Protection, as well as the “Guide for the Localization of the Comprehensive Program on Child Protection.”
In 2012 he penned for CWC its advocacy document, “Child-Friendly Philippines: A Caring and Protective Society for Children.”
Pol also maintained close links with NGOs, helping the SOS Children’s Villages Philippines conduct a rights-based situation analysis on children without parental care and at risk of losing parental care in 2009. In 2014 he helped to update the study.
In 2010 he wrote a book on the Salvatorian Pastoral Care for Children’s (SPCC) experience in building child-friendly parishes. Pol also supported faith-based organizations in developing mechanisms to protect children and women.
“The reason why I continued with my advocacy for child-friendly institutions even outside of Unicef was because I saw that strategy as workable nationwide,” Pol said.
These days, Pol serves as a member of the CWC board, as well as of the Anak Natin Foundation. He is also active in the Foundation for Grassroots Studies and Social Action, an organization he founded in 2006. He likewise serves as a board member and consultant for SPCC.
“I think the faith dimension is deeper because the way the social teachings of the church look at the rights and well-being of children and women is much, much deeper than what CRC and Convention of the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women provide. CRC and Cedaw only provide the minimum obligations, the minimum standards. But social teachings of the church, the biblical teachings on children and women, are deeper. That’s why I’m happy continuing on with the work with the faith-based organizations,” he said.
There are times when the work gets overwhelming, he admitted, especially with street children who, up to now, continue to grow in number. But despite working for the welfare of children and mothers for so long, Pol has yet to waver in his persuasions.
“I remind myself of the three Ts. Things take time. But never give up. Build on what is there. Everything is a beginning,” he said.