CWR | Center for Women's Resources

The recent school shooting in Tacloban, Leyte, is a tragedy that demands accountability – not from children, but from a government that has long neglected the needs of Filipino youth. Rather than being treated as an isolated incident, this tragedy exposes deep systemic failures that continue to place young people at risk. 

Millions of Filipinos lack access to quality education, while our schools continue to suffer from chronic shortages of classrooms, facilities, guidance counselors, and mental health services. Nearly 5 million youth are out of school and more than 24 million Filipinos are not functionally literate. Yet instead of addressing these long-standing problems, the government’s response remains one of neglect, underfunding, and punitive policies. 

We reject any attempt to exploit this tragedy to justify harsher punishments against children. The real crisis is not a lack of criminalization, but the state’s failure to fulfill its responsibility to provide quality education, accessible mental health care, social protection, and meaningful opportunities for young people.

Likewise, proposals to lower the age of criminal responsibility will neither address the root causes of violence nor prevent similar tragedies from happening again. Nor will deploying more police in schools make students safer.  Schools should be spaces of learning, growth, critical thinking, and care — not environments defined by surveillance, fear, and militarization. Accountability must also be demanded from adults entrusted with firearms. The weapons used in this incident belonged to adult gun owners, and responsibility cannot be shifted solely onto the minors. 

Without addressing poverty, inadequate access to mental health services, and the social exclusion experienced by many young people, punitive measures and increased militarization will only exacerbate feelings of alienation and despair. Focusing on criminalizing children also diverts attention from those who bear the greater responsibility for ensuring safe and supportive learning environments: governments, communities, and adults entrusted with the welfare of children. True prevention requires a holistic approach that centers on social justice, equity,  and empowerment of the youth. 

What students truly need are guidance counselors, mental health professionals, social workers, effective child protection mechanisms, libraries, and adequate school facilities that nurture their well-being and development.

Children need guidance, care, and opportunities – not fear and punishment. Schools need adequate funding, qualified counselors, libraries, and safe learning environments. Communities need decent jobs, accessible social services, and hope for the future.

Safe schools are built through education, care,  and social justice — not through fear, militarization, and criminalization.

The fight for safe schools is inseparable from the fight for a genuinely accessible, inclusive, and people-oriented education system.

As we commemorate International Workers’ Day 2026, the Center for Women’s Resources (CWR) honors all working people of the world, especially in the Philippines, whose hands and labor generate the world’s wealth, yet remain the most undervalued and exploited. The working people sustain our economies and communities, yet the current global capitalist system keeps their rights, welfare, and conditions precarious.

Workers in the Philippines face a worsening labor landscape marked by meager wages that barely meet basic needs, persistent job insecurity, intensified labor flexibilization, and worsening safety and working conditions. Labor flexibilization traps workers in unstable, low-paying and limited access to benefits and social protection. This deepens job insecurity and weakens the workers’ rights to unionize,  a critical means of  advancing workers’ rights. 

Restrictive and unjust labor policies further undermine basic workers’ rights. In 2025, the Philippines was listed among the 10 worst countries for workers due to its systematic violation of labor rights, which include red-tagging, threats and intimidation, violent dispersal of strikes, and extrajudicial killings.

Women workers are often disproportionately affected by these conditions, as they are often placed in low-paid, irregular, and unprotected jobs. Amid rising living costs and multiple burdens, women, particularly from marginalized sectors, bear the brunt of insufficient wages, pushing them further into economic vulnerability. Based on CWR interviews,  there is a persistent pattern of women resorting to extreme measures, such as skipping meals and reducing food intake, just to ensure their families survive. 

These conditions make the workers and peoples’ demand to raise the minimum wage across the regions to the family living wage of ₱1,200.00 and removal of the value-added tax (VAT) and excise tax on oil and other basic commodities. Alongside this is the demand to respect and uphold workers’ fundamental right to freedom of association, and ultimately to junk neoliberal policies and programs that have, for decades, been detrimental to the lives of the Filipino people. 

Now more than ever, CWR reaffirms its commitment to working towards a society where every worker is protected, empowered, and dignified. It holds firm that only through collective struggle can these goals be achieved. We call on everyone to stand with working people in the fight for better working and living conditions. Workers of the world, unite! #