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Programs Peace and Security Crossover Reflections on the Peace Process Crossover Reflections on the Peace Process
Programs Peace and Security Crossover Reflections on the Peace Process Crossover Reflections on the Peace Process
| Crossover Reflections on the Peace Process |
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| Wednesday, 21 October 2009 | ||||||
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by Teresita Quintos Deles Presented at the National Women's Summit on Women's Self-Reliant Leadership and Creative Empowerment in Times of Crisis, held at Miriam College, Quezon City We are entering the fifteenth year since women from all over the world gathered in Beijing and adopted the Beijing Platform for Action of 1995. It is good and right that women come together this week to assess where we are in the implementation of this hard-won platform for women. I would like to thank the organizers of this National Women's Summit for inviting me to speak at this plenary session. Senator Shahani, still our indefatigable convenor who is able to bring together women from the widest range of the social and political spectrum, told me that I could speak on any topic that I chose. Because the peace process has been the primary focus of my endeavors for over two decades, starting within the first 100 days after the peaceful ouster of the dictatorship in February, 1986, it has been assumed that I would choose to speak on the peace process -- to share my reflections on how far we have journeyed on the road to a just and sustainable peace in the country; how women have contributed to this process -- or not; and the challenges and prospects that lie ahead. The expectations set for this summit also include bringing forward "insights ... that can best re-energize and inspire the women's movement in the Philippines on the basis of individual self-reliance and collective actions." Let me say straight off that it is not easy to speak about the peace process with any measure of confidence these days, more so to inspire people about the prospects of achieving the just and lasting peace that we have dreamed of for so long. Today, the Philippine peace process, on its many different fronts, is in shambles and it is hard to see the way forward clearly towards putting the peace process back on track, towards rebuilding people's faith and trust in its possibilities and ensuring an enduring environment for making and keeping the peace. That the peace process has come undone under the leadership of a woman president makes the task of reflection and recommendation even more difficult and painful. Yet, it is in such periods of great challenge that we must stand up and insist on staying the course, persist in drawing lessons, in affirming capacities and hopes, in celebrating faith and fortitude. That has been our way as women -- staying the course, persevering, with a readiness to engage for the long haul, knowing that short-cuts and quick fixes -- whether in baking bread, darning socks, accounting for our expenses, or disciplining the kids; whether managing households, offices, or communities; whether in keeping and building the peace in our personal relationships or in the nation -- short-cuts and quick-fixes may work for the moment but will usually not hold. We must not lose sight of gains that have been achieved, of capacities which have been developed, of hopes that had been nourished at some point in the past. While staying cognizant of the risks and hardships that lie ahead, let us not begrudge ourselves the recognition of these realities because a woman president decided to undermine these gains because of some twisted agenda. As we gather together as women to look back at the last fifteen years and plan ways of moving forward, let us affirm that we stand on solid ground in insisting on pushing the peaceful path to peace. These are the very realities on which we need to build if we are to move forward in our pursuit of the peace our people need and our children deserve. I address you this morning, bringing with me two decades of involvement in the Philippine peace movement. My engagement in the peace process started with the Coalition for Peace, founded in February, 1987, which pioneering Philippine peace formation championed the participation of ordinary citizens in the peace process, representatives of the unarmed population who are also affected by the armed conflict and perhaps bear its heaviest costs, insisting that peace talks could not be left to the armed parties to work out just between themselves. The Coalition for Peace (CfP) came to hold the first ever Tent City for Peace, when Congress opened for the first time after EDSA; undertook the first Human Chain for Peace on EDSA between the two camps; made a yearly call for a People's Christmas ceasefire and pushed for government recognition of peace zones, constituting varied autonomous initiatives of local communities to unilaterally declare their territories as off-limits to armed combat and the display of weapons by any army of whatever stripe and color. CfP helped to convene the National Peace Conference, which developed a Basic Peace Agenda, a consensus document adopted by ten basic sectors, which served as the basis for President Fidel Ramos' Social Reform Agenda, which in turn led to the National Social Reform and Poverty Alleviation Act which created the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC). I have, at turns, been an activist, a civil society advocate, a government official, a struggler, a straggler, always a meddler in our people's search for an elusive peace. For four-and-a-half years, from January, 2001, until my resignation in July, 2005, I served on the Cabinet during the first half of this administration -- as Lead Convenor from January, 2001, until I was appointed as Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (PAPP) in October, 2003. I am thus a "crossover" -- in fact, a double crossover (not a double-crosser, as government sometimes likes to call me and my fellow resignees) because I crossed over from civil society to government, then crossed back to civil society, where I remain to this day. Thus, my sharing this morning will reflect a crossover perspective, laying out learnings and insights gained from both government and civil society experience in the peace process. My talk this morning will cover (a) the foundation laid by government in pursuit of the peace process, (b) key learnings from the process, (c) some thoughts on women's contribution to the peace process, and, finally (d) emerging challenges and the imperatives of the long haul. These reflections are drawn from various papers I have written, mostly as assessments of the peace process at various points in time. First, against what today seem like formidable odds, let me begin by asserting that government has established a firm foundation for pursuing a peace process. Before the disruption resulting from the GMA's declaration in 2006 that the fight against the communist insurgency constitutes the "glue that binds" her governance and before the failed Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domains (MOA-AD) between government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), government had already adopted enough executive issuances that stated what kind of peace government wants, how to do it, what are the offices tasked to lead the peace process, who are obligated to act within government. These issuances span the administrations from President Cory Aquino to the first half of this administration. In fact, under this administration, there is what is, sadly I think, a little known fact, or at least hardly paid attention to, constituting Chapter 14 of the current Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) for 2004 to 2010, entitled "National Harmony: The Peace Process." For the first time, the official national development plan contains a separate chapter on the peace process. Building on President Ramos' "six paths to peace," the Chapter establishes the targets and identifies the ways by which government would undertake the peace process, as set out in two clusters: (a) "Peacemaking and Peacekeeping" and (b) Conflict Prevention and Peace-Building. This Chapter was intended to lay the blueprint for achieving agenda item no. 9 -- Terminating all armed conflict -- under GMA's erstwhile ten-point legacy agenda encapsulated in the acronym -- BEAT THE ODDs (the second T in the acronym). These issuances, emanating from the Office of the President through the different administrations after Marcos, excepting Estrada and the second half of the GMA presidency, lay out the major features of the firm foundation of the government peace process:
Specifically, on the Mindanao peace process, several months before I resigned, I had presented a status report to the 2005 Philippine Development Forum (PDF) convened by the Philippine Consultative Group of official development aid donors with government and joined by other stakeholders. The peace process was in a very good place at the time and I posited that the peace process was standing solidly on the foundation of several, crucial building blocks, six of which I put forward as follows: 1. The high level of consensus among the national leadership and the institutionalization of the peace process in the national development plan of government -- I have already explained what this meant within government. I should add that the consensus at that time -- with reference only to the GRP-MILF peace process and not to the peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front -- drew as well from the growing support of legislators, business, religious, civil society leaders, as well as the international community. In fact, a leading member of the opposition in the House of Representatives once told me, "For the cause of peace, we will cross party lines." 2. The serious effort the government was then taking and the concrete gains we were then making in security sector reform -- As I told the PDF, this effort is not well known and is often misunderstood especially by civil society. At that time, this included the appointment of a civilian to the post of National Defense Secretary and the subsequent civilian-led shift in the profile of the leadership in the Department. It included the measures being undertaken by the defense establishment to upgrade not just equipment but also training, in order to mainstream compliance with human rights laws and to clean the ranks. (Remember, this was before the politics of survival had taken over.) Even less known were the gains we had made in crafting a convergence framework, adopted by both civilian agencies and military units, which veers more closely to human security than the national security framework. We had then also begun to institutionalize the practice of incorporating services and accomplishments in peacekeeping and peacebuilding tasks into the records of soldiers for consideration in promotions in the service as well as in earning commendations from the Commander-in-Chief. In this regard, the best examples of soldiers pursuing the peace track were emerging in Mindanao, with many layers of good practice being developed through the joint ceasefire mechanisms between government and the MILF, as well as in post-conflict rehabilitation efforts, specifically being undertaken by the AFPs engineering brigade. Along this line, the GRP CO-Chair of the GRP-MILF Joint Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities received the Presidential Merit Award upon his retirement, sending a strong message to the rank and file that the peace track, and not just "body count," was being established as a positive route to presidential recognition. 3. At the time of my presentation before PDF, I had noted as a building block of the peace process, the strengthened capacity of government institutions to converge in response to calamities, natural or caused by human actions, and to fast-track development and rehabilitation -- This serves as another clear evidence of the vast changes which have since taken over government, as demonstrated by governments response to the recent disasters caused by Typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng. In 2005, I had noted that government humanitarian and anti-poverty agencies, which include the armed forces in disaster response, have been honed in the ways of KALAHI, Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan, and directed towards peace efforts. Barring serious physical impediments, government agencies had been demonstrating increased capacity and readiness to go out of their offices and into communities and make government presence felt when and where needed. We had developed good templates for distributing relief assistance, building core shelter and schools, conducting medical missions. We had become more rigorous in monitoring our targets and commitments to communities and peace partners. While the best laid plans occasionally fell through the cracks, by and large, we found that our bureaucracy had been awakened and energized by the reality that a sense of fulfillment is best won in the most challenging places. 4. Building block constituted by civil society, religious leaders, and even the business community in building a brave, vibrant, creative, and dedicated peace constituency -- This was not true in all parts of the country. On the national level, the voices of peace advocates have often been weak, fragmented, and isolated. However, in Mindanao, citizens' efforts had carved out zones/spaces/sanctuaries for peace, barring conflict in delineated territories. Peace advocates have pushed campaigns for ceasefires as well as provided local third-party monitoring of ceasefire agreements. They have built bridges of healing and reconciliation across cultures and faiths. They have sometimes shuttled across the divides caused by armed conflict to restore connection and rebuild trust between combat parties. NGOs and some business organizations had started converging with government to bring about an early peace dividend after areas had been cleared of fighting. These activities are crucial because a strong peace constituency is needed to enable government as well as the other armed parties to muster the political will required to pursue, conclude, and, most especially, to fully implement a peace agreement. 5. The stability and gains already achieved in the peace process between government and the MILF -- I had pointed out then that the GRP-MILF peace process itself was, at that time, based on the solid foundation of three building blocks: security, development, and ancestral domains. With the MILF, there were many peace tables, not just the formal negotiating table in Kuala Lumpur, where other parties to or stakeholders in the conflict could come, sit, and engage with others in the search for peace. This was something I had shared with a key MILF representative, who had told me once that, with many tables, if you have a problem at one of the tables, the other tables are still there and so the process proceeds while you are looking for ways to address that particular problem. If the table at Kuala Lumpur reaches an impasse, it doesn't mean that the entire process immediately collapses because there is still the table for the ceasefire monitors, there is a table for the development actors, etc., where confidence and trust can continue to grow and new perspectives explored that may help to resolve the issue at another table. The development table, where the prospective multi-stakeholder Mindanao Trust Fund was birthed, was in fact intended to close the gap between the signing of a final peace agreement and the flow of peace dividends to affected communities. I also believe that many tables create alternative centers of gravity that can help to pull people's energies away from the battleground to the tracks of dialogue, mutual learning, and development. I am sorry that this section has taken so long to lay out. But, if we are to move forward, I think it is important to understand what processes have already been undertaken, what gains have been made, what lessons learned. For future peacemaking and peace-building, it is also important to realize and understand just how much past accomplishments have been undermined, how many principles have been violated in the indecent haste to conclude a peace accord without thorough consideration of the multiple stakeholders that would be affected, discarding any serious attempt at consensus-building and transparency in its decision-making processes, and without adequate preparations to ensure its proper implementation and to address its possible consequences. The peace process is currently in disarray on its many different fronts not because government did not have a blueprint to follow. The impasse being encountered on different peace fronts is not because of the lack of lessons learned from the over-drawn process of protracted negotiations and protracted fighting. I assert that government, in policy and in experience, had laid a solid foundation for the peace process. For whatever reason, however, someone unfortunately, a woman chose to put that foundation and all that had previously been gained at risk, especially undermining the hard-won trust and confidence of people in the process. This is where we must begin in restoring the path to a just and enduring peace. What have been women's contribution to the gains I have recorded in the Philippine peace process? I realize that I am now stretching the limits of the time given for my talk, so I will try to be brief. I believe that this discourse is not that new anymore. We know why women bring a different perspective to the peace process, being honed in the ways of dialogue, consultation, and inclusion as we raised children with as much patience and sensitivity as we could muster, knowing that children do not become adults overnight; in the meantime, we have to nurture the personality and the spirit struggling to find its way to its true self. Trained to understand and undertake multiple, simultaneous tasks to get everything done in the face of our multi-layered, multi-faceted responsibilities, we become used to keeping our eye on multiple tracks that are all supposed to be moving at the same time; we dream about and create the many tables where more will be able to sit and share the work of many minds and many hands. We know the value of sensible housekeeping and know that peace agreements will not happen without someone carefully taking down notes, writing and filing reports, ensuring that phone calls are made and answered. Excluded too long from and still discriminated against at the policy table, especially when it pertains to the so-called "hard issues," such as finance, security, and foreign policy, we are more ready to consider alternative solutions to issues which are under contention. We realize that while agreements are negotiated in air-conditioned rooms, families, especially women and children, suffer every day, experiencing very real conditions of hunger and want in communities affected by armed conflict; so we will insist that these needs be taken cared of now and any agreement to be signed must contain provisions to address the welfare of women and children in post-conflict situations. Because it continues to be more difficult for us to enter the hallways of public discourse and power, we have less appetite for power games and our egos are not so large and callused that they get in the way of our learning lessons, of our asking for guidance from those with more knowledge and experience than ourselves, and offering an occasional apology from those feeling aggrieved, even if we were not personally responsible for mistakes made and pain inflicted. We are brave and our courage knows no limits, whether we are monitoring or restoring a ceasefire, assisting displaced families, or negotiating terms of identity and entitlement because, in our hearts, we are fighting for the future of our children and generations yet unborn. For this future, we will lay down our lives, if necessary. We know that there are wounds that are invisible to the eye, and so we insist on programs for reconciliation and healing. We are not ashamed to cry and we can talk about our mothers and our children, about heartbreaks and breakthroughs, and this gives us comfort that, at the end of circles of discussions and negotiations, there are other realities for us to share and sometimes old songs to sing. We are women and there are many sources from which to gather our strength and develop our gifts for the peace process. And yet there are also women who will and have put at risk all the gains painstakingly achieved from the process. So we know peace does not fall automatically into our laps just because we are women, and we must be ready always for the long haul. We know too that there are men who have also been patiently and persistently waging peace with whom we need to partner for the long haul. And so we go to my final point, which is the need to prepare for the long haul. An important part of preparing for the long haul is understanding the politics of the peace process. It means fighting to ensure democratic politics, because we believe only democratic politics will connect to and ensure good governance, which is going to connect to and ensure the delivery of the desirable development outcome which is peace. It means pursuing a type of politics that is going to restore the honesty and trustworthiness of the peace process, where people have faith that the other side will not lie, will not cheat, will not steal or kill. Preparing for the long haul means building the governance institutions for peacemaking and peacebuilding; among them, the rule of law, security sector governance, far-sighted foreign policy, protection and enforcement of the rights of marginalized groups and minority peoples. Governance requires rigorous, steadfast, and intelligent housekeeping. Towards the long haul perspective and on the issues that we dont fully understand, our suggested mode of action is: lets form study groups. Lets really study foreign policy. Lets really try to understand security sector reform. Let's put more women in foreign service and the security sector. This is, for us, peace for the long haul, because these issues cannot be left to the lawyers, these matters cannot be left to the diplomats, security sector reform cannot be left in the hands of soldiers alone. And then, in the end, it is important and crucial to rebuild imagination. Imagination is a valuable resource in facing our multi-layered responsibilities in our multi-tasking lives. It is important to keep on asserting the faith that, in truth, a real and durable peace can happen, possibly within our lifetime. We need to do this because, if something -- anything -- goes bad in the process, even when it has otherwise been proceeding well, any disturbance happens and how quickly people turn around and give up on the peace process. How quickly people lose hope, how fast cynicism takes over. It is our job, as peace advocates and perhaps especially as women, working within or outside government -- it is our job to keep the flame of faith alive, to continue to assert that peace is possible and within our reach. We have to rebuild that faith and we have to craft and propagate compelling visions of peace benefits to entice our people to stay the course. Johan Galtung, the world's father of peace studies, growing old and wise in pursuit of peace processes, has said that one can find in the Philippines a lot of very good dialogue and a lot of good will but, at the same time, an absence of compelling visions of peace benefits. That is what we need to work on, especially in the face of disrupted peace processes. We have to imagine and build compelling visions of the concrete benefits that come with peace so that people will say, "Yes, I want that benefit. I want to see that change taking place in our community and I will work for it. I will build a peace constituency and I will push the peace process and I will make this and any future government accountable for making and building that peace." The long haul is a place that doesn't surprise women, knowing how long and how circuitous is the route for children to become adults. Let us stay the course. Let us keep the faith. Let us win the peace for our children and our children's children.
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