Children, Violence, and the Question the CPP-NPA Cannot Avoid

The recent school shootings in the Philippines have forced a painful question into the national conversation: how does a child become capable of serious violence?

In Tacloban, two minors, aged 14 and 15, were accused of an attack that killed three students and injured 20 others. In Zamboanga, another school shooting involving minors followed weeks later. These cases have raised questions about firearm access, bullying, online influences, planning, and other circumstances that may have shaped what happened. The incidents remain subject to investigation, but one thing is clear: understanding violence involving children requires looking at what happened before the violence itself.

That is the right question. A child does not simply wake up one morning and become violent. There may be grievances, peer influence, online communities, family circumstances, access to weapons, or other factors. None of these automatically explains the final act. We have to ask what influences were present, who shaped them, and whether anyone deliberately encouraged or enabled the child’s movement toward violence.

The CPP-NPA-NDFP appears willing to ask some of these questions. Its own publications have discussed the school shootings and argued that violence among young people must be understood in the context of the social conditions surrounding them. But this is where another question becomes unavoidable: does the same standard apply when the organization itself is confronted with the involvement of children in armed conflict?

The United Nations has documented child recruitment and use by armed groups in the Philippines. From 2020 to 2021, it verified 38 children aged 11 to 17 who were recruited or used by armed groups, with 80 percent of the cases attributed to the NPA. These findings do not mean every young person associated with the movement was recruited. They do mean that child recruitment by the NPA cannot simply be dismissed as an accusation without basis.

The CPP-NPA’s own record makes the question harder to avoid. A 2012 NDFP declaration stated that those below 18 should not become regular NPA fighters, but also described roles for those aged 15 and above as trainees or apprentices and allowed certain forms of self-defense activity. Its published account of Ka Lusyo likewise described him at 17 accompanying NPA fighters, carrying a revolver and later undergoing military training. These accounts do not prove that every minor followed the same path. But they raise a serious question about where the movement itself draws the line between political participation, military preparation and armed involvement.

There are also Davao Region cases that deserve the same scrutiny. A video presented in a Senate inquiry and had circulated online reportedly showed members of Anakbayan-ComVal inside an NPA camp in Monkayo during an immersion activity, with accounts describing many participants as 15 to 17 years old. If the CPP-NPA insists that society must investigate who influenced children before they became involved in violence, then the same questions should be asked here: Who brought the minors there? Who received them? What did they see and learn? Were they exposed to armed personnel or weapons? And what happened after the immersion?

The Talaingod case raises similar questions. Fourteen Indigenous minors connected to a Salugpungan learning center became the subject of allegations involving political indoctrination and recruitment. Former students, teachers and former communist members gave accounts alleging exposure to NPA and underground activities. If the influence of adults and organizations matters when examining a school shooting, it must also matter when examining how children may enter an armed communist movement.

Children can be influenced into harmful behavior, and adults or organizations have a responsibility not to exploit that vulnerability. That principle should not change simply because the organization involved claims a political or revolutionary purpose.

The CPP-NPA cannot reasonably demand that society investigate the influences behind violence among children while treating questions about its own relationship with minors as off-limits. If poverty, social conditions, political grievances and adult influence are relevant to understanding why children become involved in violence, then those same factors—and the actions of the organization itself—must be examined when children become involved in armed conflict.

The deeper lesson from the school shootings is therefore not simply that children can become violent. It is that the path toward violence deserves investigation before the final act occurs.

If the CPP-NPA wants society to ask those questions about school shootings, it should be prepared to answer them about itself. Children cannot be protected selectively. Violence cannot be condemned only when someone else commits it. And the exploitation of a child’s vulnerability does not become acceptable simply because it is done in the name of a political struggle.