Monday, September 15, 2008 Oledan: Shifts By Radzini Oledan Slice of life
LAST week, a peace advocate based in Cotabato City sent in an email asking her colleagues if there are plans to organize community based dialogues not only in the areas covered under the proposed Bangsamoro Juridical (BJE) but elsewhere in Mindanao.
The Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) grabbed the headlines with the aborted signing of the Memorandum of agreement (MOA) on Ancestral Domain with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Ancestra domain defines all lands and areas, including the environment and natural resources of the Bangsamoro people, established through occupation, possession, and dominion since time immemorial by cultural bond, customary law, historic rights, and legal titles. It is the single most important issue in the peace negotiation before the MILF and government can reach political settlement.
The ancestral domain covers the whole of the Muslim autonomous region and other areas in Zamboanga del Norte, Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboanga Sibugay, North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Sarangani provinces where there are large communities of Muslims and indigenous tribes, including Palawan province.
The need for greater community base dialogues underlines the fact that peace building should be more inclusive to involve local stakeholders for them to have a greater say in charting peace and development in their areas.
As it is, peace programs lack a comprehensive approach to peace building.
It does not deal with juridical-political and psychosocial issues in an integrated way but it rather focuses on juridical-political measures such as effective institution-building efforts and promotion of the rule of law, and in building State capacity to deliver public services.
There is also a glaring lack of support to formal and non-formal initiatives working on psychosocial issues and reconciliation at the local level. There may be a need for actors in the peace process to go beyond the formal peace negotiating bodies to fully involve those that are directly affected by the decades old conflict in Mindanao.
Their voices also matter if government wants to ensure that responses are genuinely reflective of the conditions on the ground.
The greater challenge is for peace building measures to go beyond the sphere of rebel groups, government agencies, peace groups and those in the religious sector to also embrace communities that have been displaced over the years. They too, have their stories to tell.
They too, could provide input to the peace measures instituted by the State.
Peace building should address the reconstruction of the political and juridical structures as well as the rebuilding of the social fabric that has been strongly affected by the war. In the same way, the issue of transitional justice both from a retributive point of view or the punishment of perpetrators and a restorative point of view or the restoration of relationships that have been broken is a key issue in order to deal with the legacy of impunity in its legal, political, economical and moral dimensions.
The local ownership of the peace building process is essential in terms of sustainable peace and in ensuring the legitimacy of the process. I remember a proposal cited by some Moro representatives, which proposes the creation of local peace negotiating teams that will ensure that dialogues are grounded on the local context. It is an area that is worth looking into.
Specifically, those who are usually the most affected by the conflict such as the young people, IPs, refugees and internally displaced, families of the disappeared, etc. -- are left out of the peace building processes, removing possibilities for bottom-up approaches to resolving the underlying sources of conflict.
The perspective of young people also remains missing in the current peace framework. Their participation is crucial in the success of peace building and efforts to manage peace.
The primary focus should be on enabling communities to tell their stories and enabling young people to voice out their views in the current peace situation. Everything is all about partnership. This time, it should go beyond the traditional sources and move towards the source of peace -- our young people.
