Speakers:
Sharmila Parmanand, Ica Fernandez, Maria Karla Abigail (Abbey) Pangilinan & Nastassja Quijano

This session covers three important conversations in the Philippines that engage with broader struggles faced by women globally: sex work; the war on drugs and its debilitating economic consequences on the poor; and the neglect of women’s needs in fiscal programming in conflict-affected areas. It is presented by a Network of Independent Researchers, all of whom are engaged in collaborative research with local communities.

The session begins with a personal narrative shared by Delilah, a Filipina sex worker, which highlights the discrepancy between dominant policy assumptions about sex-working women and their lived socioeconomic realities. Sharmila Parmanand has done collaborative research with sex workers on the harms of the criminalisation of sex work and anti-trafficking interventions. Ica Fernandez, Abbey Pangilinan, and Tanya Quijano examine the effects of the extra-judicial killings under Duterte’s violent war on drugs on poor families in Metro Manila. Fernandez also takes a gendered view on the economics of peace-making and peace-building in the Philippines, where the government has formal peace processes with five non-state armed groups.