Toward the end of our trip, when we were traveling through the northern part of Mindanao in Cagayan de Oro, we started to see a slightly different side of the conflict than we had been hearing so much about in the beginning. While the central and southern parts of Mindanao so heavily stressed the problems and negotiations between the MILF and the government, the establishment of the Bangsamoro with the BBL, and the Christian-Muslim divide, in Cagayan de Oro we heard much more about the tensions with the New People’s Army (NPA – the active Communist armed group in the Philippines), as well as mining and other international companies that were exploiting the natural resources in the area, at the expense of the local populations.
While we had heard about these aspects of the conflict earlier, it was very interesting for us to see where peacebuilding efforts were being concentrated depending on where we were on the island. Balay Mindanaw, an NGO based in Cagayan de Oro which mediated the negotiations between the government and the Revolutionary Workers’ Party, barely mentioned the MILF in our afternoon visiting their organization. Instead we heard from them about the GPF-RWP negotiations, and about the process of mediating a negotiation process that the organization had not previously been trained to handle.
Something I found fascinating during that afternoon was that, for exactly the reason that Balay Mindanaw had no mediating expertise, is why the parties wanted them to conduct the negotiations. Even though the employees did go through training to learn about the theories and techniques of mediation, their appeal was their inexperience, their ability to bring a fresh and less biased perspective to the negotiating tables. While I thought that, on one hand, this was a very logical and understandable concern for parties in a conflict to have, it did raise one question for me…how is that bias going to play a role in my future career?
