Josephine Perez

Philippines

Spanning three decades, the separatist conflict on the Philippines’ island of Mindanao has cost well over 100,000 lives. Josephine Perez is director of the Peace Education and Capacity Building Program of the Gaston Z. Ortigas Peace Institute. The initiative institutionalizes and mainstreams civil society’s long-term capacity for conflict resolution by researching and documenting existing frameworks, practices, and efforts in Mindanao. By matching diagnosis with appropriate peace-building mechanisms, the program enhances participants’ ability to handle conflict effectively. A social psychologist, Ms. Perez believes that healing damage caused by conflict is a key step in building peace. In partnership with the Sweden-based Olof Palme International Center, she provides training in stress and crisis management to peace workers, who often face immense pressure in their jobs. She teaches graduate-level courses in the psychology of peace and a seminar on group processes at the Ateneo de Manila University.

Ms. Perez’s peace-building activities include:

• developing, with a colleague, a Filipino model for nonviolent approaches to social conflict through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with peace practitioners at local and national levels—this model became the framework for the Institute’s training program on conflict resolution and transformation, which has been offered to the urban poor, fisherfolk, indigenous groups, religious organizations, the government, non-government organizations, and others;
• directing a project to document successful nonviolent approaches to conflict resolution in Mindanao;
• heading an effort to formulate and train quick-response teams to reduce violence in their communities;
• co-designing and co-facilitating the workshop “Culture of Peace,” which helped Moro women, including former militants, identify ways to promote a stable society following the signing of a peace agreement;
• coordinating and facilitating dialogues between peace practitioners and psychologists; and
• connecting released child hostages with clinical psychologists and therapists for professional socio-psychological assistance, and aiding in debriefing sessions for parents of the former hostages.

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