DAVAO CITY—The government has tendered—and the revolutionary Left has accepted—the template it used in implementing development projects in territories held by the Muslim guerrillas even if the two parties were still locked in the nitty-gritty of the peace negotiations.
The template would also see the transitioning of the Mindanao Trust Fund (MTF) into a bigger fund facility to include not only the Bangsamoro areas, but also the rest of Mindanao, “including the fragile areas”, Presidential Peace Adviser Secretary Jesus G. Dureza said.
Dureza added the concept of implementing development projects for guerrilla areas even without a peace settlement yet has been offered in the recent round of formal negotiations with the National Democratic Front (NDF), “which the NDF has immediately accepted”.
“The NDF has now created its own Committee on Development, headed by Luis Jalandoni, the former chief negotiator of the NDF,” Dureza said.
Dureza added the template refers to the world’s first initiated infrastructure and livelihood-capacitating development program applied during the peace negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
It was conceived in 2005 and officially began the following year. It allowed the MILF full management and administration of funds from several countries and foreign funders to implement the development projects in conflict-assisted areas.
In the program here that announced the transition of the MTF to a Mindanao-wide funding facility to include now the “fragile communities”, the MTF said it released a total of P1.4 billion in 11 years and completed 573 projects for 650,000 people in 315 conflict-affected communities.
Mara Warwick, World Bank country director, said the development program was the first of such venture in any conflict areas in the world, where development projects were being implemented in rebel-held territories.
Dureza said the respective committees formed by the NDF and the government panel would plan the framework and talked with international funding donors and governments that have helped fund the MTF.
A source privy to the forming of the development strategy for NDF areas said the government peace body has tapped the United Nations Development Program to form the structure of the fund body akin to the MTF.
In the case of the MTF formed by the World Bank, the European Union provided the bulk of the funds with P1.17 billion ($22 million) to the facility. The other donor countries included Sweden, Australia, Canada, the United States and New Zealand.
It could not be immediately ascertained if the new development program would allow the NDF to form its own development agency as what was done with the MILF experience, allowed to form the Bangsamoro Development Authority to manage and administer the fund according to the approved projects coming from community suggestions.
Dureza said “the MTF is not on its swan song, and would not be closing.”
“It will be extended to 2019,” he told the meeting of the MTF beneficiaries at the SMX Convention Center here, and titled the MTF-Reconstruction and Development Program closing ceremony.
He said the original MTF concept would undergo a transition toward “a bigger facility that would cover all areas in Mindanao, not only the Bangsamoro”.
“These would include the fragile areas, and the areas where the Communist Party operates,” he said.
Warwick also said the World Bank worked closely with the MILF and the government on this transition.
“The size of the fund would be finalized,” she said.
Dureza said the size of the fund would also depend on the commitment of the MTF donors. He said projects to be funded in the next two years would still rely on the result of the community needs assessment “that must come from the people themselves”.
Dr. Saffrulah M. Dipatuan, chairman of the board of directors of the Bangsamoro Development Authority, said it already crafted the other projects and were enumerated already in its development plan.
The embassies told Dureza and Warwick they would await the result of the new framework for the bigger fund facility before their governments would make official commitments.
“Be assured the European Union remains committed to help the Philippines, especially Mindanao, even if we are not really obliged to support. But we have been pouring our support, especially for Mindanao, because we believe the development of Mindanao would greatly contribute to the development of the entire Philippines,” said Ambassador Franz Jessen, the head of delegation of the EU to the Philippines.
Richard Rodgers, political and public-affairs counselor of the Embassy of Australia, said his country has been entrenched in assisting Mindanao, with its long-running assistance to basic education and a special similar program for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
“We would be looking closely at how the framework for that bigger facility developed,” said Canadian Ambassador John Holmes.