Tuesday, September 16, 2008 Editorial: Reflections on un-peace
UN-PEACE is a word thought of sometime in the 1990s, it seems, to describe a state where there is no outright war and yet peace is elusive. Much like what we have been having here for decades now, despite continuing efforts to forge peace.
Monday's editorial tackled the relative peace that followed the loud explosions and incessant gunbattles just before Ramadan. But, we spoke too soon as hostilities have risen anew in Sarangani province. And thus, un-peace.
On the sidelines are people pushed further into poverty, as un-peace shoos off investors, development, and even simple commerce. Un-peace generates dependence, since internally displaced people, the bakwits, cannot fend for themselves. No one can if you have to keep on running for your life, leaving behind farm, farm animals, home, and stability.
Focus then is how to bring about peace once more, before this un-peace spreads any further like it's doing now in Sarangani province.
Addressing the situation, however, requires a pragmatic approach and a willingness to dispel of ones 'benevolence' of the spirit to be able to come in and look at the problem not as a supply crisis -- a shortage of food, medicines, health facilities, and livelihood opportunities -- to be solved by those who have big hearts, but as a crisis of economic, political and social systems. And yes, there is a big difference.
When we only look at the spoils of war as a crisis in material supplies and an appeal to benevolent hearts, we tend to bring in solutions that address these material lack, much like what government and development aid agencies have been doing for decades now. But the un-peace remains, and more are popping up.
What is often glossed over, if not ignored, is the local resources and capacity, the politics of peace-building that non-government organizations working for peace will say is a long, tedious process. And so, what we always end up with are spoils of war.
This dream of peace should now go beyond the beauty pageant way of answering; rather, it should go down to the grassroots, enable the populations to define their priorities for what they see as their idea of peace and how they intend to achieve it. We have focused so much on leaders and individuals, and have reaped nothing but more wars. Maybe it's time to go beyond just relief and rehabilitation efforts and really start soliciting peace from those who have long been suffering from un-peace.
