Violent conflicts and the Marawi crisis
The key to achieve a sustainable peace is to have inclusive policy in terms of social preparation and project implementation.
Violent conflicts in Mindanao, with hundreds of thousand internally displaced families, since the 1970s, is a big challenge for peace advocates, community development practitioners, and policymakers in our country today. The Bangsamoro peace process aims to address this conflict for more than four decades.
Based on the data from the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP), we have an economic loss of P20 billion per year or P640 billion from 1970 to 2001. The all out war alone of former President Estrada in 2000 cost our government P1.3 Billion. In terms of human casualties, nearly 120,000 people were killed between 1970 and 1996. In terms of social welfare disruption, around 982,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) during the 2000 All-out-war, and around 600,000 IDPs in the 2008 failure of the implementation of the Memorandum Agreement on the Ancestral Domain (MOA AD). These estimates did not include the Zamboanga siege and the Marawi crisis.
With regard to the Marawi crisis, enacting and ratifying the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) within the Duterte administration becomes a top priority of the government to address the rise of violent extremists groups in Mindanao. However, the BBL alone is not enough. Sustaining peace and development requires strengthening community resiliency, rebuilding and rehabilitating social infrastructure.
To ensure that the BBL will deliver its mandate, and sustain peace, the “horizontal” / non formal peace process needs to be inclusive and participatory. But this is easier said than done. This was my insights in my recent engagement and work with the Philippine Information Agency (PIA)-National Office.
Last April 16 - 17, 2018, the Task Force Bangon Marawi (TFBM) - Information Management and Strategic Communications (StratComm) Support Group conducted the Strategic and Crisis Communication Training for Information Officers of the different member agencies of TFBM in Region 10 and ARMM. It was followed by another batch of participants coming from the 96 Barangay leaders of Marawi City on the 18th of April.
The main objective of the training was to ensure that all involved working individuals and community leaders are capacitated with the knowledge and skills required in delivering consistent and genuine information on the Marawi rehabilitation.
In my more than twenty years of community development work and conflict transformation in Mindanao, I have learned that the key to achieve a sustainable peace is to have inclusive policy in terms of social preparation and project implementation. We need to include all different sectors, families/ clans, and ethnic groups in the peace process.
Aside from this, we also need to understand that conflicts have many different levels. Hence, we need to create different mechanisms where we create more opportunities for people to talk and dialogue. We also need to involve key leaders/ actors and link them with the relevant issues and groups who may have different views on the matters for rehabilitation.