Who’s minding Mindanao’s bakwits?

DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/13 October) – The Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center’s October 2009 report features a map detailing where the internally displaced persons (IDPs) are as of May 2009 and on the same page, two quotations that sum up how government and the IDPs have been dealing with this recurring issue of conflict-induced displacement. The IDMC report quoted Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral as saying on August 16, 2008: “Some of them [people in Mindanao] need a little counselling, most do not. A lot of them are used to it. It’s not the first time that this has happened (…) They already know if there’s an exchange of gun fire, they should leave their homes, then if the shooting ends, then they go back to their homes, that’s a way of life in Mindanao…”

Cabral heads the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), the lead government agency in charge of IDP protection and assistance.

The other quotation is from an unnamed IDP in Aleosan, North Cotabato, on August 31, 2008. “Look at us. If you have been here in 2000 and 2003, we are living in the same situation. Nothing really changed except for our age. What is sad is our children might be having the same lives in the future (…) The lives of the Moro people are under the line of poverty. Now, multiply that 10 times and you see the lives of the Moro evacuees,” the IDP said.

Fourteen months after Cabral said evacuations are a “way of life in Mindanao,” thousands of IDPs have spent 14 months and their second Ramadan in the evacuation sites; thousands are still waiting to return home even as the warring forces had suspended military operations against each other in the last week of July.

In its 32-page October 2009 report titled “Cycle of Conflict and Neglect: Mindanao’s displacement and protection crisis,” the IDMC said the plight of conflict-induced IDPs and of communities assisting them “has worsened as their resources have run out."

The report includes only people dispaced "as a result of the August 2008 upsurge in fighting" between government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

At present, it is not clear exactly how many thousands are still in evacuation sites. The National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) which used to regularly update its situation report since August 10, 2008, stopped updating on July 14, 2009, long before NDCC got swamped with work due to the killer typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng.

Its July 14, 2009 reports said that as of July 7, 2009, there were still 51,326 families or 254,199 IDPs.

HELP-CM (Health, Education, Livelihood, Progress Task force-Central Mindanao) was created under Administrative Order 267 signed on 29 June, copies of which were made available only on July 16. It was supposed to coordinate efforts to help the IDPs, among others.

HELP-CM is supposed to be convened by the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (PAPP) and chaired by the government peace panel chair. The PAPP, however, resigned effective Monday, to run for mayor of Manila.

The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao’s latest update on the IDPs sent to MindaNews last week, was the September 8, 2009 report of ARMM Regional Health Secretary Tahir Sulaik. The report cited an August 20 census of IDPs -- a total of 51,482 families of 246,885 individuals “all over ARMM,” 91% of which are from Maguindanao.”

On October 4, Presidential Adviser for Mindanao Jesus Dureza appealed to donors not to forget Mindanao’s flood victims, a number of whom are “double whammy victims, having been displaced by recurrent armed skirmishes – and now by floods.”

“We sympathize with Metro Manila flood victims and we appeal for help. But, lest we forget, some parts of Mindanao also experienced flooding as residual effect of Ondoy,” a press statement from the Office of the Presidential Adviser for Mindanao quoted him as saying.

According to the press statement, StRIDe-Mindanao(Strengthening Response to Internal Displacement in Mindanao) Project, a component of multi-donor assisted Action for Conflict Transformation (ACT) for Peace Program, reported a total of 45,701 families affected by Ondoy-triggered floods in Maguindanao, North Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat -- 18,000 families in Maguindanao; 22,318 in North Cotabato; and 5,383 in Sultan Kudarat.

An updated version of the report was sent to MindaNews by Dureza’s office. “The following are the areas and number of families affected by floodings, resulting from the onslaught of Typhoon Ondoy, reported by StriDe-Mindanao as of October 3, 2009,” it said.

It put the total number of families affected at 46,138 families or 116,040 individuals from eight barangays in four towns in Sultan Kudarat province, 48 barangays in five Maguindanao towns, 102 barangays in six North Cotabato towns (PPALMA or Pigcawayan, Pikit, Alamada, Libungan, Midsayap and Aleosan), and one barangay in Zamboanga City.

Are all of these 46,138 families victims of Ondoy, as the report states they are? Or are some of
|them flood victims, the others war victims? How many of this number are both flood and war victims?

Between August 20 and October 13, there has been no consolidated report on the IDP status in the conflict areas.

Several Mindanawons – both Moro and non-Moro -- have noted the quick response of individuals and organizations to help the flood victims of Metro Manila and Northern Luzon.

They cite this in contrast to the response to war victims in Mindanao.

The Philippines adheres to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (UNGPID).

Principle 3 of the UNGPID provides that “National Authorities have the primary duty and responsibility to provide protection and humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons within their jurisdiction.”

IDPs, it added, “have the right to request and to receive protection and humanitarian assistance from these authorities. They shall not be persecuted or punished for making such request.”

Principle 4 of UNGPID states that there should be “no discrimination of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion or belief, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, legal or social status, age, disability, property, birth, or any other similar criteria.”

The IDMC report, however, noted that the Philippine government “has appeared at times unable to prioritize its responsibility to assist and protect all civilians,” and that “its attitude towards IDPs from Muslim-populated areas has seemed at times to be driven more by distrust and suspicion than by concern for their well-being.”

It added that shortly after the August 2008 upsurge in fighting, “Oxfam, clearly referring to Moro civilians, noted that ‘humanitarian assistance is being withheld from some people because of their religious belief.’”

“In past years, there have sometimes been reports of discrimination in the provision of aid during displacement, with IDP camps housing civilians considered loyal to paramilitary and government forces reportedly receiving greater assistance from government aid agencies while (mainly Moro) IDPs in schools or makeshift shelters considered as ‘pro-MILF’ found it more difficult to be recognised as beneficiaries and receive assistance,” the IDMC report said.

“During 2009, government measures to better control the distribution of humanitarian supplies and stop them falling into the hands of MILF combatants have presented problems to IDPs: they have included the reduction of the size of food rations, and the general distribution of Family

Access Cards (FACs), which has raised concerns about possible use of the personal information collected on IDPs for security purpose,” the IDMC report said.

The Moro evacuee as victim of war is also a suspected rebel or members of the “enemy reserve forces” as what the spokesperson of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, described them to reporters from Manila and Mindanao during a media forum on the IDPS in Cotabato City on June 30 this year.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Ponce claimed that IDPs are “enemy reserve forces” and that relief goods for them have been diverted for use by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Ponce said that “based on the proofs, indications, and observations presented, there seems to be a diversion of relief goods from the supposed ‘IDP’ beneficiaries to the MILF.”

According to the IDMC report, government response to the Mindanao displacement crisis “can be described as significant in terms of the delivery of essential humanitarian assistance, in particular during the first months of the emergency, but also inconsistent and insufficient as the displacement situation evolved. Despite making real efforts to assist people affected by the conflict, the government has so far failed to provide a comprehensive response to the specific problems which IDPs face. Most efforts have gone into providing emergency humanitarian assistance, but not enough to ensure that the returns which have taken place are sustainable both in terms of security and livelihood opportunities, or that alternative durable solutionssuch as local integration or resettlement elsewhere are offered when return is not an option.”

The government, the IDMC report said, “ remains by far the main agent of displacement through military and security operations against rebels and criminal groups and their suspected sympathizers.”

“Causing recurrent waves of displacement to the same areas and communities year after year, repeated AFP operations have not only prevented early recovery projects from being implemented, but they have also undermined previous return and rehabilitation efforts and left stability and security a distant dream for most IDPs and returnees,” it added. (Carolyn O. Arguillas/MindaNews)