Thesis Abstract and Dissertation Abstracts
The Dialectics of Relief and Rehabilitation in Ongoing Conflict: A Mindanao Case
Abstract Category: Other Categories
Course / Degree: Development Studies (Specialization: Politics of Alternative Development Strategies)
Institution / University: Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands
Published in: 2002
This paper confronts the dilemmas in the provision of relief and rehabilitation assistance and seeks to build a framework for more effectively carrying out relief and rehabilitation assistance in the context of ongoing conflict in Mindanao, Philippines.
It initially provides for the issues and gaps in relief and rehabilitation assistance both in the global context in general, and in the Mindanao context, in particular. Relief and rehabilitation, although formerly seen as a purely altruistic action, is now subjected to critical scrutiny due to assumptions and observations that such do more harm than good. Notwithstanding studies questioning the implications of relief and rehabilitation assistance, moral and humanitarian principles nonetheless dictate the need to continue humanitarian assistance. Thus, aside from identifying ways on how humanitarian assistance feeds ongoing conflicts, attention has been directed towards improving relief and rehabilitation strategies towards those that support peace rather than feed the war. This is because coming up with an effective relief and rehabilitation strategy should not only be based on failures but through lessons learned from successful cases or best practices.
However, most of these studies on how to improve relief and rehabilitation strategies are externally driven and therefore focuses on how to improve the international community’s humanitarian assistance strategies. The problem is that these remain deductive and dwells on how international humanitarian assistance organizations determine opportunities for intervention by the recipient state and civil society organizations, instead of the other way around. While such considerations constitute biases against government’s general capability and legitimacy during conflicts, it is nonetheless imperative to look at how relief and rehabilitation assistance could be more effectively carried out through national and local initiatives, with mechanisms for determining opportunities for participation of the international humanitarian assistance community.
The Mindanao conflict has caused severe damages to life, property, people’s relationships, and doubts about the capability and legitimacy of the state and civil society. However, both national and local government and civil society groups continue to undertake humanitarian assistance therein. Worse, while local initiatives are most intermediate and crucial and in actuality are widely employed in Mindanao, there is no sufficient critical reflection on whether these initiatives are doing good or creating further harm. There is also no understanding of the potentials of already institutionalized initiatives applying alternative approaches in coming up with an effective model for relief and rehabilitation in Mindanao.
This thesis aims to make a contribution within this gap. It seeks to find lessons both from failures and promising cases among the local and national initiatives. The paper attempts to surface learnings from the experiences in the provision of relief and rehabilitation in Mindanao with the aim of building a more effective relief and rehabilitation strategy therein, and in other conflict contexts as well.
Given that the complex nature of the Mindanao conflict and the complex solution that it entails is crucial in the study of how to more effectively carry out relief and rehabilitation, the paper discusses the roots and political dynamics of the Mindanao conflict in Chapter 2. Aside from providing the conflict background, a systematic analysis of the conflict is undertaken as basis for understanding the shape, outcome and implications of relief and rehabilitation initiatives therein. The paper employs new approaches in conflict theory, surfacing the issues of majoritarian tyranny and ethnic minorities, entitlement deprivation, and the breakdown of the social contract. The issue of the myth of state neutrality is also brought to the fore. The Chapter presents the dynamics of the Mindanao conflict and the role that various actors in Philippine society have taken and continually take in both fuelling and sustaining the conflict. The role and outcome of the actions of these actors in the conflict dynamics are reflected on as they also participate (directly or indirectly) in the provision of relief and rehabilitation assistance.
Situated in the dynamics of the Mindanao conflict, the paper leads us to Chapters 3 and 4, focusing on relief and rehabilitation practice in Mindanao where actors directly or indirectly engaged in the conflict take an active role. Within these practices in the midst of ongoing conflict, the paper picks up failures and promising cases from which a strategy more tuned to the ongoing conflict in Mindanao could be built on.
Both my analysis of data and field visit in Mindanao point out that there is something is erroneous about the way relief and rehabilitation is generally being carried out therein. Relief and rehabilitation assistance were being provided in a piecemeal basis and in many ways feed the war and further exacerbate tensions. While international and local humanitarian organizations take a role within this framework, initiatives were uncoordinated, irregular, and inconsistent, thereby carrying adverse implications. Chapter 3, while presenting these shortcomings, provides an analysis and explanation as to why government-led dominant framework for relief and rehabilitation in Mindanao is tantamount to failure. Invoking the myth of state neutrality, the chapter argues that in Mindanao where government is a major party in the armed conflict, a conflict of interest will inevitably be at play, and thereby obstructs it from carrying out a meaningful relief and rehabilitation strategy. This Chapter provides further strategic analysis of government’s position in the armed conflict in Mindanao vis a vis its role as a major provider of relief and rehabilitation. The analysis of issues and gaps enveloping government’s relief and rehabilitation efforts in Mindanao provides evidence that government could not exercise relief and rehabilitation effectively and that this is influenced primarily by the interrelationships of its position in the conflict and the role that it takes in relief and rehabilitation assistance.
Despite these failures, however, my Mindanao visit also led me to discover a more interesting puzzle. In the midst of these failures, certain communities were carrying out a potentially workable rehabilitation strategy founded on human rights and human development. From a “No Man’s Land”, the village of Nalapaan is gradually being transformed to a “Space for Peace” through local initiatives that enjoin the participation of national government and international humanitarian assistance community. The families were able to go back to their places of origin and are starting to regain their livelihood in areas, which they themselves declared as peace zones and where a collaboration of various humanitarian assistance organizations, the warring parties, and the local governments, was made possible. Thus, in Chapter 4, the paper moves from failures to reflecting on an alternative relief and rehabilitation strategy being employed in the same context, but has been generating promising results. Fundamental in the Nalapaan case is the neutrality of the project implementers in the conflict, the employment of the conflict containment approach, putting the people and local capacities in the center of the initiative, and aims to address what John Paul Laderach calls as the justice gap. These breakthroughs address some of the shortcomings arising from government’s framework and in the way government confronts the Mindanao conflict in general. Despite its strengths, the Nalapaan case also has limitations and these are discussed as dividers, dangers, dilemmas and difficulties encountered in the course of implementation of the project.
Both approaches are analyzed in light of the international framework for relief and rehabilitation. The arguments presented in Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are further illuminated by my field visits in Mindanao and interviews with experts on the Mindanao conflict and humanitarian assistance practitioners both from government and civil society.
In light of the lessons learned from the previous chapters, the concluding part of my thesis brings forth 6 major points crucial in building a more effective relief and rehabilitation strategy for Mindanao: 1) the need to go beyond disaster management that employs a more pro-active strategy rather than piecemeal traditional approaches. It is argued here that as long as government remains a major party in the armed conflict, it could not institutionalize meaningful and real strategies but will remain employing piecemeal approaches to relief and rehabilitation; 2) the importance of fostering inductive and meaningful partnerships with various actors and stakeholders in harnessing resources necessary for pursuing a promising relief and rehabilitation strategy; 3) the value of building local capacities, which have significantly greater immersion and knowledge of the conflict context as well as carrying the potential of being local capacities for peace themselves that enables curbing the negative unintended effects of relief and rehabilitation; 4)Incorporation of strategies sensitive and directed to addressing the roots of the conflict; and 5) the cruciality of changing people’s attitude and broadening their understanding of relief, rehabilitation, war and peace.
Thesis Keywords/Search Tags:
relief; rehabilitation; conflict; ongoing conflict; post-conflict development policy; human security;Tabang Mindanaw
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Submission Details: Thesis Abstract submitted by Cheryll Ruth Reyes Soriano from Philippines on 25-Oct-2004 14:30.
Abstract has been viewed 2628 times (since 7 Mar 2010).
Cheryll Ruth Reyes Soriano Contact Details: Email: che.soriano@pms.gov.ph
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