Is the national government honoring its obligations in implementing the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro?
Sad to say, according to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), it doesn’t look that way.
The MILF and the independent Third Party Monitoring Team (TPMT) are not happy at all with the slow implementation of the normalization track of the Bangsamoro peace process. They are saying that this has been lagging far behind the political track.
According to Ahod “Al Haj Murad” Ebrahim, MILF chair and interim chief minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), the problem lies in the lack of funding from the national government, which failed to include it in the General Appropriations Act (GAA) this year.
The normalization track of the peace process should have been implemented parallel and complementary to the political track provisions of Republic Act 11054 or the Organic Law for the BARMM.
The normalization track provides for the decommissioning of MILF forces and weapons, the transformation of six recognized MILF camps into peaceful and productive zones, and the disbanding of private armed groups.
It also includes the grant of amnesty to MILF members and the redeployment of the Armed Forces of the Philippines from or within the Bangsamoro region, among others.
But although the decommissioning process is now on its third phase, with the last 35 percent of former MILF combatants turning in their weapons to be kept “beyond use,” the socioeconomic package that combatants expect to get from the government to rebuild their lives has been lacking.
The decommissioning of the 40,000-strong Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF), the armed wing of the MILF, is one of the significant aspects of the normalization process.
It is currently in its third phase, involving 14,000 combatants or 35 percent of the MILF-BIAF members.
The second phase was completed in March 2020, involving 12,000 individuals or 30 percent of the MILF combatants, but the promised socioeconomic package of P1 million for each of the decommissioned combatants has not been fulfilled by the national government.
It now appears that the decommissioned MILF-BIAF fighters erroneously thought that they would each be given P1 million.
But it turns out that the promised P1 million would consist of P100,000 in immediate cash assistance, with the rest in the form of non-cash benefits such as study grants, skills training, and social protection based on the result of the needs assessment conducted for each of the decommissioned combatants.
This actually involved a 10-year program for the combatants.
It is unfortunate that even with the third phase of the decommissioning process, the socioeconomic support for the deactivated combatants has been coming in trickles, while the transformation of former rebel camps has yet to be fully implemented.
These, plus the fact that the National Amnesty Commission has not been constituted, thus delaying the grant of amnesty to MILF members, complicate matters, and raise concern the national government appears to be taking its own sweet time in fulfilling its promises under the peace agreement.