Promoting Women's Participation In the Peace Process:
Key Towards Sustainable Peace in Mindanao
by Mary Ann M. Arnado, Initiatives for International Dialogue, Mindanao People's Caucus

The ongoing conflict in Mindanao is undeniably a male-dominated, male-perpetrated, macho game of aggression. Like any other armed conflict in the world, it is a costly war, claiming innocent lives and displacing thousands of families, with women and children enduring harsh living conditions in evacuation centers for long, difficult months.

We always hear sad stories of women and children dying in evacuation centers, caught in the crossfire, traumatized. News reports depict the women as mere casualties of war-weak, defenseless, and at all times needing protection by powerful armed men from either military or revolutionary groups.

Little is known about how women of the indigenous peoples, Bangsamoro, and settler population survive in this conflict. How do they cope and what do they contribute toward rebuilding peace? How can they help in the peace process?

This paper will present the results of the Thematic Workshop on the Role of Women in Peacebuilding held during the Mindanao Peace Summit last September 10-12, 2002, in Davao City. The summit was attended by about a hundred grassroots leaders from the conflict-affected areas in Cotabato, Lanao, Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao, Davao, and Zamboanga Peninsula. The so-called tripeoples in Mindanao, the Lumads or the indigenous peoples, the Bangsamoro, and the settlers were all represented. The theme of the summit was "Empowering the grassroots and rebuilding peace in Mindanao."

Women as Mediators and Negotiators
Maranao women from the Bangsamoro peoples view themselves as "tiglimpyo sa mga hugaw sa katilingban" (cleaners of the dirt of the community). They usually play the role of mediators in conflict situations. Whenever there is rido or family feud, it is always a woman who addresses critical issues and brings the parties to settlement. Within Maranao culture, women do not consider themselves oppressed or exploited because they know their specific roles and place within the community and the confines of their culture. Women are well respected and influential in the community.

Western gender standards may present a different view of women's position in these communities. For example, a woman from the Matigsalug tribe showed a picture of a woman tugging her two children while carrying farm products on her back. How you interpret that picture depends on your cultural, political, economic, and ideological background. For a Matigsalug woman, it simply means that she is a hardworking woman assuming her role as a nurturer of the community.

This is a critical point in our attempt at describing and enhancing the role of women in peace building, especially within the context of Mindanao, where conflict has cultural dimensions. Gender issues must always complement local cultures for us to be able to optimize women's participation.

In the Arumanen Manobo tribe, women are sent to the enemy to settle conflicts. Arumanen Manobo women see this as a crucial role in their community life-mediating and resolving conflict even at the risk of sacrificing their own lives. More often than not, the women are successful in the negotiation process and are able to prevent the conflict from escalating.

What is ironic in this scenario is that Arumanen Manobo men have another view of women as peace negotiators. According to Marsh Daul, an expert in the oral history tradition of the Arumanen Manobo, the men send their women ahead as mediators because they are deemed dispensable to the tribe. Between a man and a woman, it is wiser to gamble with the woman. They send their women as "sugal" or as pawns to their enemy. The men were quick to note, however, that this is a troubling aspect of their culture.

Another woman of the Matigsalug tribe said that women only talk during meetings if they have a specific responsibility or task assigned to them. If there is none, their men talk for them. During the plenary presentation of the workshop, most of the Datus and Timuays expressed their apprehensions about promoting the role of women. They cautioned that this should not contravene their culture-a core issue in the struggle of the indigenous peoples. Timuay Nanding Mudai, a tribal chieftain of the Subanen tribe from the Zamboanga peninsula, said that these activities for women should not teach wives how to slap their husbands, nor should they attempt to equalize the status of women with the Datus or the Timuays.

Women as Mothers
Mothers are the first teachers. They shape the minds and hearts of the young and are influential in the family. Mothers shape our values, beliefs, spirituality, habits, practices, and even our biases and prejudices.

Baicon Macaraya, an active Moro leader from Lanao, recounted her experience at a beauty parlor where she was going to have a haircut and had to take off her combong. Beside her was a Bisaya with her young daughter. The daughter was tired and impatient and wanted to go home. To silence her daughter, the mother told her "dili gali ka mopatoo diha pakaonon ta ka og Moros" (If you won't obey me, I'll feed you to the Moros). Baicon was shocked. If this is the way mothers raise their children, it is no wonder we keep reinforcing these biases and prejudices against one another: biases against the Moros, prejudices against settlers, and discrimination against the Lumads. After Baicon finished her haircut, she put on her combong, approached the young girl, and gave her most sincere smile. She did not know what effect her smile would have on the girl, but through that smile she wanted to convey that Moros do not eat children.

Another experience Baicon shared happened during 2000 at the height of the war. She and a companion were going to a shopping mall in Davao City, and they agreed that, as a test, Baicon would wear her combong and her companion-also a Moro-would remove her own. When they entered the mall, Baicon was thoroughly searched while her companion not wearing a combong entered freely.

Invisibility of Women in the Peace Process
While existing customs and practices within our communities recognize the role of women as peace negotiators and mediators, the reality is that we also have policies and systems that make these efforts and roles invisible. Our roles in the community as peace mediators seem to be but an extension of our role in the kitchen-that is, to keep the peace within the family and contain conflict among the children and family members. There is no recognition of the women as peace negotiators in the more "formal, public, and official sense."

How many women are in the peace negotiations? In the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) Peace Panel, two out of five are women while its Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) counterpart has no women members at all. Who is part of the negotiations? A quick count shows that it is dominated by men who are generals and lawyers-professions that thrive in conflict. In the whole peace process machinery from the principals down to technical and working group committees, there are elements that consider the negotiating table an extension of the battleground.

It is easy to predict what will happen at the negotiating table with only men around it. They will debate about weapons, territorial integrity, political power, self-determination, constitution, power sharing, elections, international laws, and politically negotiated settlement-the so-called hard issues. This is the legal rhetoric and diplomatic bullying that impedes genuine peace.

Bring in the women and they will show you the human face of the conflict. They will tell you about their lives in the evacuation centers, food blockades, sick children, orphans, widows, destroyed homes, schooling, medicines, trauma, and broken relationships. If we put women at the negotiating table, they will change the equation of the negotiation. They will introduce practical, workable solutions to the conflict in Mindanao. This does not mean that women are not parties in the right-to-self-determination struggles of the indigenous and Bangsamoro peoples in Mindanao.

If women have already been playing the role of mediators and peacemakers in their communities, why is their expertise not recognized and tapped in the official peace process? We seem to have the distorted notion that men are for public concerns and women for private life-hard issues for men, soft issues for women. Thus, if this Mindanao peace process is official, it should be left to men while the women do their usual mediation within the family and at the community level-the latter perceived as an extension of the woman's kitchen. This is where we miss the point. If we continue excluding women, we can never complete this peace process.

There is a need to elevate the status of women as mediators and negotiators of conflict from the community level to the official peace negotiations. That done, we will be able to talk about food, homes, education for children, reconciliation, and the rebuilding of relationships among the tripeoples. Women's current initiatives like the zones of peace, spaces for peace in Pikit, Cotabato, the Pilgrimage for Peace in Kauswagan and Lanao, and the peace dialogues in Carmen must be institutionalized and supported in the official peace talks until we make the entire island of Mindanao our zone of peace.

A case in point is the relief and rehabilitation agenda in the talks. Government bragged about the hundreds of houses they rebuilt for evacuees, but women who visited these structures said that they are not sensitive to women's needs. Their concept of home is not only the four-cornered building that government provided. A home has a place for growing vegetables and space for raising chickens and hogs to supplement the family's income. If we built only physical structures, we failed to address the woman's need to be productive within her own domain. The space must also be one where she has the opportunity for livelihood, thus contributing to her empowerment as a productive member of society.

The peace talks do not see this. Their plans use generalized statistics and look at men as representatives of the human race. What is good for the men will probably do for the women, children, aged, sick, and disabled. Another example is the situation in evacuation centers where all people are lumped together-women, men, children, carabaos, dogs, and pigs. Policies pertaining to relief and rehabilitation do not see conditions from the perspectives and needs of women. Considerations for hygiene and decency are totally disregarded, thus making women from already dehumanizing situations vulnerable to other forms of sexual abuse.

This is not a prophecy that women will bring everlasting peace to Mindanao. What is important is that we start in the right direction by bringing our sisters into this negotiation process. Then perhaps we can rebuild peace in Mindanao for ourselves, our children, and the generation to come.

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