TJRC Report: GPH-MILF Peace Implementing Panels to seize Bangsamoro opportunity

From the Philippine Information Agency (Feb 24): TJRC Report: GPH-MILF Peace Implementing Panels to seize Bangsamoro opportunity

The Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) Report submitted to the GPH-MILF Peace Implementing Panels underscores the issue on land dispossession and listening process calling on both panels to seize the Bangsamoro Opportunity.

The TJRC was created by both panels in line with the Annex on Normalization of the mutually signed Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB).

Its mandate include the conduct of a study and recommend to both Panels the appropriate mechanisms to address legitimate grievances of the Bangsamoro people, correct historial injustices, address human rights violations and marginalization through land dispossession towards healing and reconcilation.

As the TJRC Report contains the issue on land dispossession and listening process, Chair Mô Bleeker emphasized that the only way to realize their mandate is to listen to the Bangsamoro people and in order to understand their grievances.

“Listening to the Bangsamoro people was the only way to realize our mandate. We chose to listen in order to understand their grievances and affirm that the Bangsamoro were capable of articulating what they needed and how we ought to journey together toward reconciliation, healing and peace,” she said.

The stories and ideas were shared during the listening process sessions in which they engaged over 3,000 community members and local officials in some 211 Moro, indigenous and settler communities in Mindanao and in the island provinces, she said.

Along the consultation process, Bleeker said, the Commission was surprised to find that seeing these conditions as part of the Bangsamoro Problem, the people recognized them as Bangsamoro opportunity and that peace is possible with political will and wider set of stakeholders’ participation and involvement.

According to the report, there are four key findings made during the listening process: legitimate grievances, historical injustices, human rights violations covering abuses against their political, economic, social and cultural rights, and land dispossession.

Lead coordinator of TJRC listening process Prof. Rufa Cagoco-Guiam said listening process is a very important tool in order to know the Bangsamoro people’s concerns and what could possibly be the solution to their problems.

“We conduct listening process to listen with empathy, to listen with compassion and to acknowledge their concerns and to provide possible solutions and recommendations. We assure them of the confidentiality of the data that we gathered. “she said.

http://news.pia.gov.ph/article/view/1661487904829/tjrc-report-gph-milf-peace-implementing-panels-to-seize-bangsamoro-opportunity