Do children get priority when an area is evacuated because of armed conflict?

Three duties in three sentences

Children shall be given priority during evacuation as a result of armed conflict. That is the headline, but the sentence that does the most work in practice is the last: Measures shall be taken to ensure that children evacuated are accompanied by persons responsible for their safety and well-being. Between them sits a direction that existing community organizations be tapped to look after children during evacuation operations. Priority answers who leaves first; accompaniment answers the harm that priority alone can cause, which is a child moved out quickly and separated from anyone answerable for him at the other end.

What is owed once they arrive

Section 24 continues the sequence at the shelter. Members of the same family are, whenever possible, to be housed in the same premises and given accommodation separate from other evacuees, with facilities to lead a normal family life. Expectant and nursing mothers and children are to be given additional food in proportion to their physiological needs, and children are to be given opportunities for physical exercise, sports and outdoor games whenever feasible. The qualifiers — whenever possible, whenever feasible — are honest about conditions on the ground, but they set the standard against which an evacuation centre's arrangements are measured.

Evacuation is one half; reunion is the other

Section 22, which declares children Zones of Peace, requires that the delivery of basic social services such as education, primary health and emergency relief services be kept unhampered, and that all appropriate steps be taken to facilitate the reunion of families temporarily separated due to armed conflict. That last policy is the counterpart of the accompaniment rule. The statute anticipates that families will come apart in the movement and treats putting them back together as an obligation rather than a matter of luck — which is worth knowing, because a separated family is often told the opposite.

The list that makes a child findable

Section 26 supplies the mechanism most families never hear about. The chairman of the barangay affected by the armed conflict must submit the names of children residing in that barangay to the municipal social welfare and development officer within twenty-four hours from the occurrence of the conflict. That list is frequently the only official record that a particular child was in the area at all, and everything downstream — tracing, reunion, access to relief — is easier when the name is on it. If you are displaced, confirming that the barangay made the report is a concrete first step.

Related provisions

• RA 7610, Section 22 — Children As Zones Of Peace
• RA 7610, Section 23 — Evacuation Of Children
• RA 7610, Section 24 — Family Life And Shelter
• RA 7610, Section 26 — Monitoring And Reporting