Today, Feb. 20, marks the observance of the World Day of Social Justice, which was initiated by the United Nations in 2007. The theme for this year’s campaign is Global Coalition for Social Justice: Bridging Gaps, Building Alliances, underlining the imperative need for countries to share resources and best practices that will enable a faster pace of development for less developed economies.
Social Justice is the overarching theme and integral part of the agenda in the thematic clusters of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. This is mirrored in the manner in which Social Justice is depicted in the Philippine Constitution’s Declaration of Principles and State Policies, as follows:
“Section 10. The State shall promote social justice in all phases of national development; Section 11. The State values the dignity of every human person and guarantees full respect for human rights.” (Article II).
In Article XIII, 19 sections are devoted to an articulation on how social justice will be propagated in the spheres of human rights, labor, agrarian and natural resources reform, urban land reform and housing, health, women’s welfare, and people’s organizations.
Human rights is clearly prioritized. There is a separate section devoted to the creation of a Commission on Human Rights.
Poverty alleviation is also a dominant theme. The late former President Ramon Magsaysay once declared: “Those who have less in life should have more in law.” Two arenas in the fight for poverty are marked out by the Constitution: agrarian reform and urban land reform, recognizing the imperatives for a targeted response to the unmet needs of millions of Filipinos who are languishing in the bottom rungs of the economic pyramid.
At Cabinet level, there is a Department of Agrarian Reform that oversees the implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law. Within a year after taking office, President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. signed into law the New Agrarian Emancipation Act, fulfilling his promise to enact a law condoning the farmers' unpaid debts.
The Presidential Commission on the Urban Poor was created through Executive Order No. 82 signed by the late former President Corazon Aquino on Dec. 8, 1986. On March 29, 2012, President Benigno S. Aquino III issued Executive Order No. 69 transferring the PCUP to the Office of the President and conferring Cabinet rank to its chair.
How has the country fared through these past decades of government-led initiatives to make social justice a living reality in all its dimensions?
According to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), the Philippines is on track to attain upper middle income status by 2025; that is, per capita gross national income is $4,256. But this is a mathematically derived figure. In late January 2024, OCTA Research revealed that self-rated poverty was reduced slightly in the fourth quarter of 2023, to 11.9 million poor families or 300,000 less families than the previous figure of 12.1 million. Given that the average household size is 4.1 people, even the lower poverty figure would still translate to 48 million Filipinos.
Hopefully, the post pandemic recovery efforts will bring about an accelerated pace of economic development that would make social justice a living reality in our land.
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