A negotiated political settlement to the long-running Moro rebellion in Mindanao is only a short-term solution, conceded government chief negotiator Miriam Coronel-Ferrer. The government is banking on the education of the youth as the long-term remedy to the problems in Mindanao, she said at a recent forum hosted by the Lanao del Norte peace and order council.
Ferrer was responding to fears expressed
by some political leaders that after a peace agreement is signed with the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), new rebel groups would emerge and make new
demands.
Ferrer said the Aquino government, which
signed a framework agreement with the MILF late last year, sees a combination of
peace deals and the promotion of education as the way to build lasting peace in
communities torn by years of armed conflict.
While the government is trying to finalize
the peace deal, which includes the establishment of a Bangsamoro government, it
has also been exerting efforts to improve the youth’s
access to education, she explained.
Ferrer said the government was aware that
the peace deal with the MILF would not guarantee that similar uprisings would
not erupt in the future. It needs to be complemented by education
as the long-term solution to make the youth “feel that they have a future, hence
to see no need to be involved with armed groups,” she said.
Among the efforts to make education
accessible to all are the construction of more school buildings
and hiring of more teachers, she said. Ferrer believes that with schools built in as
many communities as possible, the youth will spend more time learning from
teachers rather than listening to the ideals of antigovernment armed groups.
Ferrer is a political science teacher at
the University of the Philippines, a traditional hotbed of activism and
suspected recruitment ground for revolutionary causes, including Moro
separatism.
Ferrer added the government also expects
to achieve a turnaround in the situation in the five-province Autonomous Region
of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) with various reforms being instituted by the interim
regional administration and the continued commitment of more sources to bankroll
development efforts.
Ferrer asserted that by changing the
situation in the five provinces that comprise the ARMM, future revolutionaries
would no longer be able to point to government neglect in convincing people to
join them.
For years, these provinces were referred
to by Moro revolutionaries as the hallmarks of prolonged government neglect.
The provinces of Lanao del Sur,
Maguindanao, Tawi-Tawi, Basilan, and Sulu are among the country’s most
impoverished areas. Social development projects were lacking.
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