2009/05/13
Bill being rushed vs budget impoundment
The Senate finance committee is consolidating a budget-impoundment bill that will prevent the Office of the President from withholding funds allocated in the annual budget and approved by Congress for various government departments and service agencies. Sen. Edgardo Angara, committee chairman, is likely to gain wide support in both chambers of Congress, but they still want to hear the positions of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), the Freedom from Debt Coalition and Social Watch, among others, before endorsing the impoundment bill for plenary approval within the year.

2009/01/23
Social Watch Philippines to Bicam members: Do not sign 2009 budget without details
Do not sign the 2009 national budget until the details of the P1.415-trillion budget are disclosed to the public and to the members of the Bicam themselves. This is the call of Social Watch Philippines (SWP) to members of the Bicameral Conference Committee upon announcement by the Senate President that the Bicam is ready to pass the budget while even members of the Bicam are complaining that they do not know its details.

2008/07/28
The business of governance
For seven years Social Watch Philippines has weighed the accomplishments of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s administration in social development, particularly the Millennium Development Goals and found them grossly wanting. Mention has consistently been made of poverty, inequity, increasing hunger, deterioration in education, stubbornly high levels of infant and maternal mortality, low levels of health, environmental degradation, and global problems related to trade and debt.

2007/12/17
Launch of Social Watch Report 2007 in the Philippines
Social Watch Philippines released its global report last November, to coincide with the conclusion of the National Consultation on Financing for Development that was attended by civil society groups and discussed the status of the country’s programs to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

2007/11/26
The Business of Governance
The death by suicide of a twelve-year old girl from Davao due to extreme poverty has touched the collective conscience of the country. People of consequence, from the President down to bureaucrats, social anthropologists, civil society organizations, and media personalities have endeavored to explain why a child would commit suicide.

2007/08/31
Attaining the MDGs: Are we really on track?
Last August 15-16, forty-two national networks of civil society organizations met in Quezon City to assess the government's Philippines Mid-term Progress Report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs.) They also considered the alternative assessment of Social Watch.

2007/08/19
Philippines 'off track' on MDGs
Ahead of the release late this month of the official report to the United Nations on how the country is faring in its implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) midway to the 2015 deadline, civil-society organizations are already saying that the government is “off target” particularly in achieving the most crucial goals.

2007/08/16
Fund for contraceptives remains unspent while LGUs waits for guidelines
WHAT happens when a government agency has P180 million for family planning supplies but is barred from buying contraceptives?

2007/08/07
Social Watch Philippines kicks off civil society review on FfD
Five years after the United Nations Financing for Development (FfD) Conference held in Monterrey Mexico in 2002, Social Watch Philippines (SWP) once again kicks off the civil society review of the FfD outcomes in the Philippines.

2007/05/10
Kiangan pilots community-based monitoring system
KIANGAN, Ifugao (10 May) -- In line with the localization of the Millennium Development Goals, this municipality has adopted the community-based monitoring system (CBMS) as a strategy to achieve full development and prosperity.

2006/12/04
Hope amid despair
The devastation wreaked by Typhoon Reming on the hapless residents of Southern Luzon is only one of many natural disasters which occurred in quick succession this year.

We thought Milenyo was the mother of all supertyphoons. It turned out that destructive forces brought by earlier calamities were surpassed by Reming. Extra-strong winds, excessive rainfall, rampaging floods, huge boulders, mudflows, landslides—name it, Reming brought them with unparalleled fury.

2006/11/20
NGOs support Senate version of '07 national budget
December 07 2006, Philippines. National Twenty-two non-government organizations on Thursday expressed their support to the Senate's version of the proposed 2007 national budget.

2006/08/27
Gov't urged to invest more in millennium goals
Professor Leonor M. Briones, Social Watch Philippine co-convener and chairman of the Silliman University Board of Trustees posed the question in her book "Moving Forward with the Millennium Development Goals: May Pera Pa ba?"

2006/06/27
RP debt service totals P721.7 B, study shows
The Philippines is allocating P721.7 billion in debt service, with P340 billion going to the interest and P381 billion meant to pay for the principal amortization. This means an allocation of P1.98 billion per day which is equivalent to the building of 7,920 classrooms or 250 kilometers of roads per day.

2006/02/16
RP on ‘poverty red alert’
Poverty should be treated as an emergency that needs immediate action, an alliance of anti-poverty organization said yesterday, reminding the government of an alarming poverty incidence of about 3.97 million Filipino families.

2006/02/16
SW convenor participates in Switzerland tax debate
A co-convenor of the Social Watch from Oriental Negros presented the concerns of the Philippine civil society amid the global tax phenomenon at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, recently.

2005/09/08
Launching of the Social Watch Philippines 2005 Report
Social Watch Philippines launched the Social Watch Philippines 2005 Report “Race for Survival Hurdles on the road to meeting the MDGs in 2015” and the Social Watch Annual Report 2005 “Roars and Whispers. Gender and poverty: promises vs. action” last September 8, 2005.

2004/10/20
Funds tighter for basic services, used for debts
Having said earlier that sharp disparities in income and continuing civil strife in parts of the country will make it unlikely for the Philippines to attain its Millennium Development Goals (MDG), Prof. Leonor Briones, coconvenor of the Social Watch Philippines, had more bad news on Tuesday. She said continuing deterioration of basic social services and increasing debt payments would add to the difficulty of reaching the MDG.

2004/10/19
Licking poverty “unlikely“
Sharp disparities in incomes, education and health, combined with unrelenting civil strife in parts of Visayas and Mindanao, make it very unlikely for the Philippines to attain key targets set in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a public administration expert said on Monday.

2004/04/27
International Report slams Philippines over Mindanao
ILOILO CITY, April 26 (IslamOnline.net) – An international network of non-governmental organizations lambasted in its annual report released Monday, April 26, the Filipino government over its failure to end the decades-old crisis in Mindanao. "As long as the government talks peace but makes war, and as long as the economic model does not recognize the need to battle against inequality and poverty, human security will remain a remote possibility," said Social Watch.

2004/01/28
Pick your crisis
There is now general agreement that the Philippines needs to come to grips with the fiscal deficit and the debt problem. Whether it is a fiscal problem or a fiscal crisis, the fact remains that the deficit remains unmanageable while the public debt is now calculated to be 80 percent of the GNP. In the meantime, the Philippines still has very high poverty levels and is hard put to raise additional resources for the Millennium Development Goals.

2004/01/19
Mother of Protest Meets Targets Uncle Sam
Leonor Briones, coordinator of Social Watch Asia and professor at the University of the Philippines was more concerned over the lack of involvement of the poor at large in the privatisation process. She pointed out that the ongoing privatisation was being actively pursued by the multilateral agencies with a message: either privatise or die. The global experience has proved that only a handful were the beneficiaries of the much debated privatisation, she said.