Going beyond ‘peace’

The ongoing visit of Colombian women and their dialogues with Philippine officials and peace workers has been an eye-opener not just for the foreign visitors but for their Filipino counterparts as well.

The talks have opened our eyes not just to the many interlocking issues around armed conflicts and the peace process, but also to the complexity of these issues, especially as against the backdrop of the national situation.

For instance, Miriam Coronel Ferrer, a member of the government panel in the negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), mentioned to the Colombian delegation that aside from addressing the historical and present-day grievances of the “Bangsamoro People,” a religious as well as political, cultural, and ethnic identity, government must also address problems of poverty, skewed development priorities, drugs and criminality that hound Muslim Filipinos. “Not all the problems in Mindanao are political,” remarked Coronel, adding that the youth in particular are affected by shifts in social reality too often ignored in the political disputes on which most coverage of Mindanao focuses.

This view was echoed in a later dialogue with Secretary Teresita Quintos Deles, the presidential adviser on the peace process. While the OPAPP has oversight over the two major negotiations with the MILF and the CPP-NPA-NDF, she said, her office’s responsibilities go beyond the peace negotiations. It is her office’s mandate, she said, to prepare the way for the “post-peace” environment, including preparing the ground for meaningful development and for raising the economic and social status of people in conflict-affected areas, since poverty, inequality and injustice were the reasons these conflicts have arisen in the first place.

Interestingly, Deles pointed out that the Philippine Development Plan for 2010-2016 now contains a chapter on peace, in which it is declared that “promotion of the peace process shall be the centerpiece of the internal security program.” The Plan notes that “peace is not just the absence of war or conflict,” but rather also “entails winning the hearts and minds of the aggrieved and afflicted while retaining the allegiance of the rest.”

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WHILE much of the focus has been on the two main negotiations, between the government and the MILF and the government and the communists, Deles said that the government “actually has six tables now,” although the four other negotiations have been taking place well below the radar.

For instance, said Deles, there is the recent “completion” of the peace negotiations achieved with the Cordillera People’s Liberation Army (CPLA). The CPLA broke away from the New People’s Army in the 1970s, forging an ideology that emphasized the rights and identity of the indigenous people of the Cordilleras. The CPLA agreed to a ceasefire with the first Aquino government in 1986, but this was not pursued to its logical ends. For instance, while the CPLA no longer waged war against government forces, they still kept their arms and some elements used these for criminality or in the service of the military as auxiliaries.

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THE RECENT closure agreement, said Deles, seeks to transform the CPLA from an armed force to an “unarmed potent social and economic organization.”

Among the agreements are: addressing the need to provide livelihood for former CPLA members, including possible employment as forest guards or the creation of coffee plantations in areas suited for the purpose. Second is the pursuit of community development initiatives to address community-based concerns.

Under the new agreement, the CPLA members must also register their guns and return those seized from the military during encounters or raids. The CPLA must also register as a duly certified organization or association. “They can still use ‘CPLA’ but no longer call themselves a ‘liberation army,’” Deles said.

The fifth agreement, noted Deles, is “very interesting.” This falls under the category of “legacy documentation,” with CPLA leaders insisting that the group’s role in the forging of Cordillera history should not be allowed to simply fade away and disappear from the consciousness of Cordillerans. “We want to write our own story,” the CPLA leaders told Deles, be this in the publication of a book, the building of monuments or placement of markers, or the rewriting of history books. There is a similar demand from the MILF, added Deles, including the rewriting of history accounts that pay greater attention to the role of Muslims in resisting colonial invaders and fighting for their own distinct historic and cultural identity.

Clearly, the pursuit of peace is not just the pursuit of an end to fighting, but also the pursuit of historical vindication and of historical truth, the beginning of true national unity.

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TOMORROW marks the launching of the Philippine Family Planning Society, an umbrella group of health professionals and advocates. Principally, the PFPS aims to produce a steady stream of family planning providers from among midwives, nurses and doctors who will make “quality FP services available to Filipinos needing help in planning their families.”

Dr. Lourdes Capito, who chairs the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UP-PGH, said they envision the Society as a “nurturing ground for providers who will be trained in both the science and art of family planning, and who will be grounded in the family planning needs of communities, especially those who are socially disadvantaged.”

Though family planning services have been available here since the 1970s, inconsistent promotion and funding from government and consistent opposition from the Church have resulted in an “anemic” family planning program, the Society says.