CARMEN, North Cotabato—A congressman from North Cotabato has called on government forces and Moro guerrillas to ensure the safety of civilians, especially mothers and children.

Nacionalista Party Rep Emylou Taliño-Mendoza of North Cotabato, a known women and children-rights advocate, said that while she fully supports the peace process, “no one could stop me from criticizing violators of the cease-fire agreement that led to armed clashes and displaced innocent civilians, many of whom are children and women.”

Unhappy with the sight of evacuees from the towns of Pikit and Aleosan, Taliño-Mendoza said: “If armed combatants out there could not honor agreements that they themselves crafted and sign, please, I beg them to spare the civilians.”

Taliño-Mendoza, who represents North Cotabato’s First District, said she was “disheartened with this new man-made calamity [evacuation] because it came at a time when many of our constituents have not even started to recover the damage caused by the flood the other week.”

Taliño-Mendoza distributed relief goods to the evacuees.

Aside from the displacements of civilians, the legislator said the armed skirmishes in her province “have not only displaced many women and children but also adversely affected the economy.”

“Agricultural production was already significantly lessened, with millions of pesos worth of crops damaged by the flood. The war caused farmers to remain idle at the evacuation centers, instead of attending to their farms,” she said.

The Department of Agriculture’s Central Mindanao office reported that heavy rains in the last few weeks damaged around P100 million worth of agricultural crops.

Late last week, some 500 families were reported to have fled their homes in the towns of Pikit, Aleosan and Midsayap in Cotabato province following skirmishes between government forces and Moro guerrillas.

In the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, some 10,000 families were reported to have fled their homes because of the flood.

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CARMEN, North Cotabato—A congressman from North Cotabato has called on government forces and Moro guerrillas to ensure the safety of civilians, especially mothers and children.

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