Children at risk with death of Mindanao peace deal.

Children at risk with death of Mindanao peace deal Failure to pass Bangsamoro Basic Law could have dire consequences for the young

 

Barely two years after the Philippine government and the rebel Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) signed a peace deal, children in the country’s restive south face anew the risk of massive displacement.

Last weekend President Benigno Aquino’s key legislative allies sounded the death knell for the Bangsamoro Basic Law, a draft bill on Moro self determination, dashing the hopes of a minority that has seen centuries of armed struggle in defense of their homeland.

More than 5,000 Muslim Filipinos, many of them young people, staged a protest in Marawi City in Mindanao on Feb. 2, calling Aquino a “traitor.”

Several religious leaders, including Catholic bishops, have already warned that disappointment over the government’s failure to pass a law on expanded autonomy strengthens extremist groups already exerting pressure on the rebel’s aging leaders.

Rep. Teddy Brawner Baguilat of Ifugao said the setback could jack up Mindanao’s child displacement figures from the current annual estimate of 30,000 to 50,000.

The failure of the centerpiece to Aquino’s peace program also comes at a time when Southeast Asia faces a growing threat from the group calling itself Islamic State.

Despite strong U.S. support for anti-terror drives in Mindanao, urban centers across the archipelago remain vulnerable to bombings and attacks that have plagued the country in the past decade.

Baguilat said the Philippine government and civil society have the daunting task of pursuing the peace dialogue as Muslim Filipinos lament a second major defeat for the peace process.

The first came in 2008 when the Supreme Court struck down a Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain between the rebels and the administration of then president Gloria Arroyo, leaving rebels, the government and foreign sponsors aghast.

Fighting that followed the debacle displaced more than 750,000 people in the southern Philippines, that year’s highest displacement figure worldwide.

Derailed hopes

In 2014, veteran rebel and government troops wept as peace negotiators signed a comprehensive peace agreement in Manila.

At Moro headquarters in Cotabato City, rebel combatants and their wives cheered and clasped children to their breasts as the senior government peace adviser dedicated the peace process to Mindanao’s children.

Peace negotiator Teresita Deles spoke of hope “that, henceforth, no family shall be forced to drive their children away for fear of their being maimed and wounded by conflict; and that no child has ever again to cross a raging river and knock on a stranger’s door to beg for protection.”

“I will not let peace be snatched from my people again,” said President Aquino.

The peace deal took 17 years of negotiations, cost thousands of lives, and saw millions of people displaced.

Then one day in January 2015, an American-supervised anti-terror operation against a Malaysian terrorist sparked a deadly clash between Philippine state and rebel forces, which claimed the lives of at least 43 police commandos.

Aquino, facing probes for the bloodbath, lost the peace initiative even in a congress where he enjoyed a supermajority.

His pet legislation was watered down twice. Rebels warned they would reject any law that junked key provisions of the peace agreement. No amount of roadshows and press statements could mask the writing on the wall.

Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, the government’s chief peace negotiator, told ucanews.com that Aquino would pursue other components of the peace pact, including a massive influx of development aid and continued coordination with the rebels.

The rebel group, she said, has pledged to keep its areas free of extremists and terrorists.

Despite this, there is an air of uncertainty in Mindanao.

A radical splinter group, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, has spent the last year cobbling together what it calls a united front dedicated to an independent Muslim homeland. The BIFF has many supporters in the front’s most tested combat units.

“We may yet see the worst,” said Romeo Dongeto, executive director of the Philippine Legislators’ Committee on Population and Development Foundation, Inc.

He warned that Muslim Mindanao couldn’t afford another major conflict. It already has the second highest poverty incidence in the country and the highest malnutrition rate for children.

Official figures on child soldiers in the country are very low. UNICEF reported only 32 in 2012, but the U.N. secretary-general admitted in a statement last year the problem was grossly underreported. UNICEF also reported the death of 13 children and the wounding of 26 others as a result of conflict.

It’s no secret that in Mindanao’s conflict areas, children learn at a very young age to view weapons as a necessity of life.

The Mindanao conflict costs the Philippine economy 20 billion pesos ($417.5 billion) in annual losses, according to the government’s peace office. Of the 120,000 killed in the Mindanao conflict from 1970 to 1996, 20 percent were civilians, government records show.

Spikes in child recruitment during massive displacement have been noted. Forced out of school and feeling insecure, minors are lured to join state and nonstate forces with offers of regular meals, the company of peers and mentors and the means to retaliate against the enemy, the lawmaker said.

Baguilat, the legislator, worries about a recent upsurge in bigotry both from the non-Muslim majority and the 9.6-million minority group in Mindanao.

He told ucanews.com that in his home province, which shelters a big Muslim community from the diaspora, animosity has grown following the January 2015 deaths.

“We are all victims of historical circumstances,” said the legislator. “We must stop the cycle of rage.”

Inday Espina-Varona is an editor and commentator based in Manila.