Peace Mission urges GOs, NGOs to help address plight of refugees

By: ROMY ELUSFA

DATU PIANG, Maguindanao – After a week of the ongoing accompaniment mission with the evacuees here, peace groups came up with a dozen set of recommendations to address the plight of the over 30,000 refugees, which include a call for government and private organizations to conduct health missions and trauma healing sessions.

The recommendation, which surfaced during an assessment held at the parish convent here, was based on the group’s findings that “many children and aged are sick, some of them already died in the evacuation center and the continuing deterioration of the evacuees’ health condition.”

The ongoing accompaniment mission organized by the Bantay Ceasefire is joined by the Peacebuilders Community, Initiatives for International Dialogue, OMI (Oblates of Mary Immaculate) Disaster Response Team and the Mindanao Peoples’ Caucus.

Records of the Bantay Ceasefire show that since the war started in August of last year, there were already 111 civilian casualties, 95 of them died and 16 were injured. Of the 95 death, 40 are children and infants. The Bantay Ceasefire also noted 471 houses burned in this town alone.

Aside from calling for private and government organizations to address the health problems at the evacuation center, the Mission also urged international donors to intervene by way of helping provide food and shelter for the evacuees.

Last week, the MPC issued a statement calling for a stop to the “food blockade” after 100 bags of rice of the OMI Disaster Response Team was held by soldiers.

Earlier, 11 truck-loads of rice the International Committee on the Red Cross was supposed to deliver in Datu Piang was also held at an Army check point. The Army said it was only concerned with the safety of those supposed to distribute the rations following alleged threats of MILF harassment.

Yul Olaya, coordinator of the Bantay Ceasefire, explained that many new evacuees who vacated their homes in May and early this month have yet to receive rations from humanitarian organizations who are still in the process of listing up the new evacuees.

In Barangay Macasendig alone of neighboring Midsayap town, the Bantay Ceasefire recorded over 400 new evacuees who fled the village of Reina Regente in this municipality. Some 92 houses were burned.

The recommendation of the group also included the need to educate the evacuees of their rights provided by the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

Olaya said they would try to invite the Commission on Human Right and other humanitarian organizations to conduct “teach-ins” at the evacuation centers so that “evacuees will know their rights as IDPs.”

“There are so many complaints about abuses against civilians who do not even know that their fundamental rights had already been transgressed,” he said.

The Mission said they will sustain their presence here and conduct “series of dialogues with stakeholders, hoping we could build a wide network of organizations jointly addressing the plight of the bakwits.”

While they are in this town, the Mission participants, numbering more than 40, said they will also try to mobilize more volunteers to replicate the accompaniment mission here in other refugee camps in neighboring towns of Datu Piang.

“We are organizing a similar mission in the towns of Guindulongan, Talayan, Datu Saudi and other towns of Maguindanao where there are also plenty of evacuees,” Olaya said.

While they are addressing the plight of the evacuees, the mission participants said that their “counterparts and partners” in the cities of Cotabato and Davao, and in Manila, will also “aggressively lobby for the resumptions of the peace talks between the government and the MILF, which collapsed after the Supreme Court did not allow the government negotiators to sign the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain. The MOA-AD, a product of a four-year negotiation between the two parties, was subsequently declared unconstitutional by the High Court.