UN, foreign groups end Mindanao tour

COTABATO CITY, Philippines  --- Representatives of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) ended Wednesday their four-day tour in Mindanao to study the peace process.

The OIC, a bloc of 57 Muslims countries including petroleum exporting states in the Middle East and North Africa, has a representative to the on-going peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Dubbed “High-Level Partnership Mission to the Philippines,” the joint study tour, led by Atta El Manan Bakhit, assistant secretary-general of the OIC’s humanitarian affairs, and Rashid Khalikov, director of OCHA, sought  to assess the gains of the Mindanao peace process and determine possible needed interventions to further support  the initiative.

The OIC also helped broker the September 2, 1996 peace accord between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front.

The visiting dignitaries also met separately with Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao Gov. Mujiv Hataman, and Ghadzali Jaafar, MILF’s vice chairman for political affairs.

Hataman and his executive secretary, lawyer Anwar Malang, briefed the OIC and OCHA representatives on the political and administrative functions and issues of the ARMM, whose territory the MILF wants to put under a new self-governing entity based on its 2012 Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro (FAB) with Malacañang.

The visiting OIC and OCH representatives also barnstormed Maguindanao province, a known bastion of the MILF, to visit project sites of the Payapa at Masaganang Pamayanan (PAMANA) program of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process.

The PAMANA program is focused on socio-economic activities aimed at accelerating the rehabilitation of conflict-affected communities in areas covered by the government-MILF 1997 Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities.

Just as the OIC and OCHA officials were inspecting PAMANA projects sites in Maguindanao last Wednesday, the International Labour Organization and the Bangsamoro Development Agency (BDA) forged here a tie-up on a special project for impoverished Moro communities.

BDA’s executive director, Mohammad Yacob, and Lawrence Jeff Johnson, ILO’s country director for Philippines, signed before representatives of various media outfits in Central Mindanao an agreement detailing how their agencies are to implement the “Program for Local Government Development through Enhanced Governance and Grassroots Empowerment” or PLEDGE in Moro areas.

The PLEDGE supports the socio-economic component of the GPH-MILF talks.

Johnson told reporters  that there is a need for socio-economic interventions  to improve the lives of Moro people while the government-MILF talks are underway.

The ILO had also implemented projects that complemented the efforts to help  combatants of the MNLF after the latter signed a peace pact with Malacañang during the time of President Fidel Ramos.

With its PLEDGE project for Mindanao, the ILO became the latest foreign organization to join a  number  of international agencies backing the GPH-MILF peace talks.