![\"WOMEN](\"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/emma1.jpg\")
<\/a>WOMEN POWER. (L to R) Juckra Abdulmalik and Roslaine Lidasan Macao-Maniri of the MILF peace panel\u2019s technical working groups, Emma Leslie of the International Contact Group, government peace panel chair Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, Undersecretary Zenonida Brosas and Undersecretary Bai Yasmin Busra-Lao in Kuala Lumpur. PHoto courtesy of OPAPP<\/p><\/div>\n
The United Nations Security Council\u2019s Resolution 1325 on October 31, 2000 reaffirmed \u00a0the important role of women in the \u201cprevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response and in post-conflict reconstruction and stresses the importance of their equal participation and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond military action, power and wealth sharing <\/b><\/p>\n
In the Cordaid and WO=MEN policy brief in September 2010 titled \u201cGender-responsive Peace and State-building Transforming the Culture of Power in Fragile States,\u201d \u00a0Yoka Brandt, former Dutch Ambassador to Uganda and Director-General of the International Cooperation at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (now Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF in New York), was quoted as saying that when women are actively involved, \u201cpeace agreements are more credible and cover a broader range of issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir participation widens negotiations beyond issues of military action, power, and wealth sharing, and promotes a non-competitive negotiating style and bridge-building between the negotiating parties,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
While Herbolzheimer lauds the Bangsamoro peace process as \u201cone of the most gender-sensitive in the world,\u201d getting there was not easy. For as the Bangsamoro struggle for self-determination moved on, the women\u2019s struggle for representation in peace-making, as well as within the Bangsamoro itself, moved on, too.<\/p>\n
In the 1974-1976 formal peace negotiations between the Philippine government and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) that led to the signing of the Tripoli Agreement on December 23, 1976 and the 1992 to 1996 negotiations that led to the signing of the Final Peace Agreement on September 2, 1996 \u2013 did not have women in either the government or MNLF peace panels, even as the war years took their toll on mostly women and children.<\/p>\n
Courage, defiance<\/b><\/p>\n
But it took the courage of a woman \u2014 then President Corazon Aquino \u2014 to defy the counsel of her predominantly male security advisers to meet with MNLF chair Nur Misuari in Jolo, Sulu, in the early months of her post-Marcos dictatorship administration, to talk peace. And while no peace agreement was forged within her term (1986 to 1992), \u00a0she paved the way for the reopening of talks with all Moro factions and she left a legacy that the next administrations would not be able to take out easily: the inclusion of the concept of an autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao as well as the Cordillera, into the 1987 Constitution.<\/p>\n
The Moro revolutionaries frowned at what they viewed to be a unilateral decision on the part of the first Aquino administration. They wanted the \u201cletter and spirit\u201d of the 197t6 Tripoli Agreement implemented. They saw the establishment of\u00a0 the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) as another unilateral move of government, not a product of a peace settlement.<\/p>\n
The Ramos administration that followed, signed a Final Peace Agreement with the MNLF on September 2, 1996 and almost simultaneously, opened talks with the MILF, \u00a0which had split from the MNLF in the late 1970s and by the 1990s was a far bigger force than the MNLF.<\/p>\n
The GPH panel, led by a retired general and former Ambassador,\u00a0 Manuel Yan and the MNLF peace panel, led by Misuari, had an all-male membership in the four rounds of formal peace talks from 1992 to 1996. The government peace panel had women in the technical working groups but they were a minority. The MNLF had none. But for a time, their wives were present during the talks in Jakarta, Indonesia, but not inside the negotiating room.<\/p>\n
The idea to bring their wives along Misuari copied from Yan, who always traveled with his wife. After meeting Yan\u2019s wife during the first round of talks, \u00a0Misuari in the succeeding rounds also traveled with his wife, Eleonora or Ruayda Tan. By the third and fourth rounds, \u00a0some panel members and commanders in Misuari\u2019s team also brought their wives.<\/p>\n
First woman panel member
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\nIt was only during the peace negotiations with the MILF, which formally started in 1997 (still under the Ramos administration), when the Moro women were finally given a seat at the peace table.<\/p>\n
The late Emily Marohombsar of Lanao del Sur, who made history as the first, and thus far, the only woman president of the Mindanao State University (February 1993 to December 1998), \u00a0again made history as the first Moro woman to have been named\u00a0 member of the government peace panel.<\/p>\n
<\/a>WOMEN FOR PEACE. They bear the burden of armed conflicts but Moro women had to struggle, too, to get a seat at the peace negotiating table. Photo taken during an assembly in the MILF\u2019s Camp Darapanan, Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao, courtesy of Emma Leslie.<\/p><\/div>\n
The peace negotiations under the Estrada administration collapsed when it waged an \u201call-out war\u201d in 2000 to take control of the\u00a0 MILF camps previously acknowledged by a joint government-MILF team for purposes of \u00a0determining the scope of the implementation of the general ceasefire agreement. Nearly a million residents were displaced.<\/p>\n
When Estrada was ousted as President and then Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took over, she vowed an \u201call-out peace.\u201d \u00a0But two wars occurred within her nine-year administration (2001 to 2010): the 2003 war in Buliok that displaced some 400,000 and the 2008 war that followed the botched signing of the already initialed GPH-MILF Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD).<\/p>\n
The 2008\u00a0 war displaced some 600,000\u00a0 residents and was \u201cthe biggest new displacement in the world\u201d out of 4.2 million newly displaced in\u00a0 2008, according to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) in its April 2009 report.<\/p>\n
More women<\/b><\/p>\n
More women, however, were given seats in the government peace panel. When Arroyo reconstituted the government peace panel on February 19, 2001, she named the first ever civilian-led peace panel under Jesus Dureza, Presidential Adviser on Mindanao (the previous government peace panel chairs were all retired generals), and named two women in the panel: Marohombsar and Irene Santiago of the Mindanao Commission on Women (MCW), the organization behind the Mothers for Peace movement.<\/p>\n
The women served as members until July 2003. The next panel under Silvestre Afable, Jr.,\u00a0 had Sylvia Paraguya of Bukidnon, representing the Lumads (indigenous peoples). \u00a0When retired Armed Forces deputy chief of staff Rodolfo Garcia chaired the panel from July 2007 to September 2008, Paraguya remained as member and another woman, who had been serving in the legal panel, Assistant Chief State Prosecutor Leah Armamento was also named as member.<\/p>\n
When Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Rafael Seguis took over from December 2008 to June 30, 2010, his panel had one woman member: Dr. Grace Jimeno-Rebollos, then President of the Western Mindanao State University and a leader of the Peace Advocates Zamboanga.<\/p>\n
Women in the NGOs<\/b><\/p>\n
It was in the decade of the wars \u2014 \u201call-out war\u201d in 2000 and the wars in 2003 and 2008 \u2014 when women in non-governmental organizations took the lead in accompanying the peace process: Santiago\u2019s MCW, \u00a0lawyer Mary Ann Arnado\u2019s Mindanao Peoples Caucus,\u00a0 Mindanao Coalition of Development NGOs or Mincode under Dolly Corro and later Patricia Sarenas, \u00a0and the very young Rosan Aliya Agbon\u2019s Kids for Peace, among others.<\/p>\n
It was also during this period when Moro women took an active part in organizing and leading groups such as the Young Moro Professionals under Ayesah Abubakar and Samira Gutoc,\u00a0 Bangsamoro Laywers Network and Nisa Ul Haqq Fi Bangsamoro (Women for Truth and Justice in the Bangsamoro) under Raissa Jajurie and Laisa Alamia, Suara Bangsamoro party list under Amirah Lidasan, Philippine Council (now Center) for Islam and Democracy under Amina Rasul, Bangsamoro Women\u2019s Solidarity Forum under Tata Maglangit, Lupah Sug Bangsamoro Women under Fatmawati Salapuddin and\u00a0 Mindanao Tulong Bakwet under Rose Ebus.<\/p>\n
Women at the grassroots<\/b><\/p>\n
Women also played an active role during mass evacuations from war.\u00a0 A number of women led marches and \u201cBakwit Power\u201d to call on both the GPH and MILF to end the war and return to the negotiating table.<\/p>\n
Babu Umbai Maliganan of Pikit, North Cotabato, went around Mindanao and Manila to talk about the bakwits\u2019 plight. She was also the most frank among members of a team that went to Malacanang twice to appeal to then President Arroyo to stop the war. She told Arroyo and her Cabinet officials that she was tired of war, the she had been fleeing the war since she was little and that she was already a grandmother and was still fleeing the war, this time with her grandchildren.<\/p>\n
The last time Babu Umbai met Arroyo was in Congress when she was no longer Presdient and was already a congresswoman of her district in Pampanga.\u00a0 She told Arroyo: \u201cMa\u2019am, ang promise mo sa akin, hindi mo pa naibigay. Yung peace para sa Mindanao.\u201d<\/p>\n
Babu Umbai never lived to see the dawning of peace. She passed away in March 2012<\/p>\n
Teams monitoring the implementation of the ceasefire between GPH and MILF, like the Mindanao Peoples Caucus\u2019 Bantay Ceasefire, \u00a0also sprouted within this period, with \u00a0several women among its members, including Brenda Albarico, a tricycle driver in Midsayap town in North Cotabato.<\/p>\n
In October 2010, to mark the tenth anniversary of UNSCR 1325, an all-women contingent of the Civilian Protection Component of the GPH-MILF peace process, was launched, composed of women from various tribes and faiths.<\/p>\n
Women in the MILF panel<\/b><\/p>\n
When the administration of Aquino\u2019s son, Benigno Simeon III took over on June 30, 2010, he named\u00a0 UP College of Law dean Marvic Leonen as chair \u00a0on his 15th<\/sup> day in office. \u00a0Ferrer was later named member, the lone woman then.<\/p>\n The MILF, apparently reacting to criticisms that the panel it reconstituted was again \u201call-male,\u201d announced they were taking in two women advisers from \u201cWestern Mindanao and Central Mindanao.\u201d<\/p>\n Sulu-born lawyer Raissa Jajurie of the alternative law group, Saligan Mindanaw, was named consultant along with Bai Cabaybay Abubakar, President of Shariff Kabunsuan College in Maguindanao.<\/p>\n The MILF continued to be an all-male panel but as the talks progressed, Jajurie would sometimes serve as alternate panel member.\u00a0 Her tasks expanded as well. \u00a0It was Jajurie who steered the technical working group on Wealth-sharing for the MILF. \u00a0Jajurie is also a member of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) which is drafting the Bangsamoro Basic Law.<\/p>\n By December 2012, another lawyer, Roslaine Lidasan Macao-Maniri, joined Jajurie as an adviser on transport and communication. Juckra Abdulmalik, \u00a0who lost one of her\u00a0 nine children to a miscarriage during the war years in the 1970s, assisted in the TWG on Normalization.<\/p>\n Women in GPH panel<\/b><\/p>\n In the government panel, Bai Yasmin Busra-Lao of Lanao del Sur, Undersecretary on Muslim Affairs, was initially appointed as consultant but was later named as panel member.<\/p>\n Ferrer, a senior member of the panel since 2010, was named chair in December 2012, days after Leonen was appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n The chairs of the GPH technical working groups who negotiated the annexes on Wealth-sharing and Normalization are also women: Ma. Lourdes Lim, regional director of the National Economic Development Authority in Southern Mindanao and National Security Council Undersecretary Zenonida Brosas. Brosas served as a member of the technical working group in the GPH negotiations with the MNLF in the 1990s and was a member of the GPH team in the Tripartite Implementation Review with the MNLF and the Organization of the Islamic Conference.<\/p>\n The head of secretariat is Iona Jalijali who brings a predominantly women\u2019s team in Kuala Lumpur while the communications team is headed by Polly Cunanan.<\/p>\n Johaira Wahab of Maguindanao led the legal panel from 2010 to early 2013. When she was named Commissioner at the Bangsamoro Transition Commission, Wahab\u2019s post was taken over by Anna Tarhata Basman, who was already on board, along with Armi Bayot.<\/p>\n Valentine\u2019s 2012<\/b><\/p>\n On Valentines\u2019 Day in 2012, when the Decision Points of April 2012 and the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro in October of the same year were still a dream, the women in the GPH peace panel did what could be a first, worldwide, in contemporary peace-making history: \u00a0giving a Valentine\u2019s gift to\u00a0the peace panel of a revolutionary group.<\/p>\n The second day of the three-day peace talks fell on February 14, Valentine\u2019s Day, and just as soon as the panels sat down before 10 a.m. for what was expected to be a really heavy day of discussions on substantive issues, then GPH panel chair Leonen informed Malaysian facilitator Tengku Dato\u2019 Ab Ghafar Tengku Mohamed that the women had something important to say.<\/p>\n Ferrer, Lao, Wahab, Bayot and Basman stood up to greet everyone a \u201cHappy Valentine\u2019s Day,\u201d approached the MILF peace panel members and its secretariat and handed over a heart-shaped canister of chocolates each to MILF chair Mohagher Iqbal, panel members Datu Michael Mastura, Abhoud Syed Lingga and Datu Antonio Kinoc,\u00a0 secretariat members Jun Mantawil, Mike Pasigan, Mohadjirin Ali and the lone woman in the MILF team \u00a0then \u2014 Jajurie.<\/p>\n Lao acknowledged that Muslims do not celebrate Valentines\u2019 Day but added, \u201cwe live in a pluralistic society.\u201d<\/p>\n Ferrer said \u201cwe did it in the spirit of friendship between panels and the spirit of collegiality between us women and the men with whom we are working hard to find a solution.\u201d<\/p>\n MILF chair Mohagher Iqbal\u00a0 told MindaNews\u00a0 then that the women\u2019s act of giving was \u201cvery sweet\u201d but added, \u201cwell, to us, the \u00a0spirit of Valentine is incidental;\u00a0the real thing is we are engaged in negotiation to search for real justice and peace in Mindanao.\u201d<\/p>\n Balance at peace table<\/b><\/p>\n Like the MILF peace panel, the ICG \u2014 the group of state and international NGO representatives accompanying the peace process, and the Malaysian facilitator\u2019s team == are also male-dominated. But the head of the Malaysian secretariat is a woman: Che Khasna.<\/p>\n Emma Leslie, Executive Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict\u00a0Studies in Siem Reap, Cambodia and Philippines Programme Associate also at Conciliation Resources, is the ICG\u2019s lone woman member.<\/p>\n