The Southeast Asia Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC-SEA) and the Asia Pacific Solidarity Coalition (APSOC) is organizing an international peace mission as a quick-response initiative to the critical peace and security conditions prevailing in Basilan. The Initiatives for International Dialogue (IID), an international solidarity organization based in Davao City, is the secretariat of both the GPPAC-SEA and APSOC.
Scheduled for 4 days, August 10-13, the international peace mission will be conducted in collaboration with the Mindanao Peaceweavers (MPW), the umbrella organization of nine peace networks all over Mindanao.
A line of one old famous song so close to the hearts of Chavacanos in Zamboanga says: No te vaya, no te vaya a Zamboanga. Roughly translated, it means “Don’t you go, don’t you go to far Zamboanga”. But women peace advocates of Mindanao and its partners in Southeast Asia seem to be oblivious of the warning as they are set to go to Basilan, an island-province south of Zamboanga.
The Southeast Asia Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC-SEA) and the Asia Pacific Solidarity Coalition (APSOC) is organizing an international peace mission as a quick-response initiative to the critical peace and security conditions prevailing in Basilan. The Initiatives for International Dialogue (IID), an international solidarity organization based in Davao City, is the secretariat of both the GPPAC-SEA and APSOC.
Scheduled for 4 days, August 10-13, the international peace mission will be conducted in collaboration with the Mindanao Peaceweavers (MPW), the umbrella organization of nine peace networks all over Mindanao.
Basilan grabbed the international attention again when some 14 Marines of the Philippine military were killed in an encounter with the forces of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), 10 of them were beheaded and mutilated, last July 10. The MILF admitted the killing of the Marines in what they claimed as “a legitimate encounter” but denied the beheading and mutilation of the slain soldiers. The government maintained that the Marines who were on patrol in search for the kidnapped Italian missionary Fr. Giancarlo Bossi and his abductors were “ambushed” by the combined forces of MILF and the notorious Abu Sayyaf Group.
After the MILF refused to surrender those responsible of the deaths of the 14 Marines, the government gave the go-signal to the military to launch “punitive actions” against the Moro rebels suspected to the killings and subsequent “barbaric acts”. Peace advocates throughout Mindanao and the international community urged the government to suspend the military offensives to give way to an international fact-finding body to determine what really happened.
In a command conference held in Zamboanga City last July 27, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ordered the suspension of the military offensives in Basilan for three days in order to give the joint government and MILF team enough time to conduct investigations in Basilan.
As the clouds of war become imminent, the people of Basilan are worried of their situation. Reports coming from the Bantay Ceasefire, a grassroots ceasefire monitor, indicated that around 7,000 persons are now being displaced due to the uncertain peace and security situation in Basilan.
As a rapid response mechanism, according to Memen Lauzon-Gatmaytan of the Solidarity and Networking Program of IID, the women peace mission is an expression of solidarity to the Basilenos and hopefully help avert the looming war in the island-province.
The mission will be led by women peace advocates and women members of civil society organizations in the Asia-Pacific region to highlight the important contribution women play in the resolution and prevention of violent conflicts and emphasize the solidarity of women to fellow women and children victims of the current violence in Basilan.
Lauzon-Gatmaitan pointed out that it is a given fact that women and children are the most vulnerable sector in conflict situations. Data have shown that countless women and children all over the world suffer the trauma of war. For the most part they are civilians caught in the crossfire and are eventually left alone to care for the needs of the family and the community.
It is in this context that the Women’s Peace Mission to Basilan is being conceived for women to insist that war or any armed conflict and violence is most damaging to them, Lauzon-Gatmaitan explained, adding that “the all-women peace mission is a concrete expression of the women’s assertion of their right to live with dignity in a peaceful environment, with their sense of security intact.”
The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security which reaffirms “the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peacebuilding. The Resolution stresses the importance of women’s equal participation and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security, and the need to increase their role in decision-making with regard to conflict prevention and resolution”.
As studies have shown, in all conflict situations women have demonstrated astonishing resourcefulness and resilience in coping with the difficulties. They have shown remarkable strength in adversity and ingenuity in such situations. Obviously, war had changed the status of women, whether within the family or in the community, as the situation obliges them to take on different functions and play different roles.
Therefore, it is important for women to act in solidarity with other women who are conflict situation, Lauzon-Gatmaitan concluded.
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