COTABATO CITY, Philippines — For the first time ever, the Bangsamoro government participated in a global hunger and malnutrition summit abroad where its representative talked about how constituent communities are struggling to address both.

In a privilege presentation, the physician Kadil Sinolinding Jr., a member of the 80-seat Bangsamoro regional parliament, told participants to the June 15-16 Second Global Parliamentary Summit Against Hunger and Malnutrition in Valparaiso in Chile, South America that hunger and malnutrition are two serious issues besetting the Southern Philippine autonomous region.

The summit was organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations that, along with other UN agencies, have current humanitarian projects in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The BARMM covers the provinces of Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, and the cities of Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato, where many villages became markedly poor, still struggling vigorously to overcome underdevelopment caused by armed conflicts in decades past.

Sinolinding is an eye specialist who had served as regional health secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao that got replaced with BARMM in 2019 as a result of 22 years of peace talks between Malacañang and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Sinolinding, in a documentary presentation, explained to summit participants that Malacañang and the BARMM government are together addressing hunger and malnutrition through socio-economic interventions.

In the forefront of BARMM’s anti-hunger and malnutrition programs are the region’s health, local government, social welfare, education and agriculture ministries.

Video clips showing Sinolinding presenting in the summit in Chile the hunger and malnutrition cases in BARMM circulated in Mindanao Saturday.

He had said that the BARMM government is grateful to foreign benefactors helping its constituent-communities overcome the pangs of hunger and malnutrition via concerted efforts supported by different ministries in the autonomous region.