One date, two connected historic events
May 23 – the Fourth Anniversary of the start of the Marawi Siege and the Fifth Anniversary of the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS).
The WHS called by the United Nations was held in Istanbul, Turkey on May 23-24, 2016. The Marawi Siege, staged by the ISIS-inspired Daulah Islamiyah, more popularly known as the Maute Group, commenced on May 23, 2017.
The two events happened a year apart and underscores one thing: humanitarian crisis. The WHS enunciated a global determination to alleviate, if not end, the sufferings due to humanitarian crisis by changing the humanitarian aid architecture while the second initiated a humanitarian crisis that resulted to tens of thousands of survivors.
ECOWEB responded to both events: campaigning for the Grand Bargain Agreement to change the humanitarian aid architecture where more aid should be coursed through local organizations and more directly in the hands of the population affected of crisis instead of international humanitarian agencies directly responding to the internal displacement resulting from the five-month war in Marawi City. ECOWEB sustained both efforts to this day. With respect to the Marawi Crisis, ECOWEB still have an ongoing livelihoods recovery and social cohesion project for the displaced population of Marawi in partnership with Plan International and with support from USAID. With respect to the WHS, ECOWEB is one of the endorsers and serves as member of the international coordination group of the Charter for Change and its Executive Director currently serves as chair of the Alliance for Empowering Partnership (A4EP), a global alliance of local and national CSOs advocating for the localization of humanitarian aid. A4EP is the newest and 63rd signatory of the Grand Bargain. ECOWEB in collaboration with UN OCHA Philippines, OXFAM Philippines and A4EP are currently initiating a country-level dialogue process on localization of humanitarian aid in the Philippines with support from the UN Resident Coordinator, Center for Disaster Preparedness and Asian Preparedness Partnership. Results of the localization dialogue process is aimed to be shared to national stakeholders and to the Grand Bargain localization workstream. Localisation and Participation Revolution are two major commitments of the Grand Bargain that ECOWEB are actively advocating on the ground.
SCLR and Marawi crisis response
ECOWEB’s work in response to the two events is strongly linked by its advocacy of the Survivor and Community Led Response (SCLR) to crisis that gained government recognition through the grand national award of the Gawad Kalasag for best civil society organization (CSO) in 2019. ECOWEB defines sclr approach as Participation Revolution in action on the ground.
SCLR supports local action of diverse groups working independently but collaboratively towards a durable solution of the humanitarian crisis. It adheres to the belief on the capacity of the survivors from the affected population to initiate and lead efforts to address the crisis with external crisis responders as facilitator and support. It is anchored on the principles of complementation, empowerment, respect and upholding the dignity of the affected population.
In its response to the Marawi Crisis, ECOWEB put the SCLR into practice by providing support for emergency needs and recovery process of more than a hundred self-help groups of internally displaced persons (IDP) of the Marawi crisis. To enable the IDPs to amplify their voice, ECOWEB with partners provided support in the formation of the Suara O Miymagoyag, an association of more than 10,000 families of Marawi IDPs. A local coordination of CSOs called Bangon Marawi Civil Society Platform (BMCSOP). Both the Suara O Miyamagoyag and BMCSOP spearheaded a campaign for finding durable solution to the crisis.
Voices of the affected after 4 years since the Marawi Siege
On the occasion of the 4th Anniversary of the Marawi Siege, ECOWEB’s IDP partners echoed their feelings, hopes and lamentations of returning to their beloved city proving the diversity of voices that ECOWEB’s SCLR hope to amplify.
Marawi’s Sultan Hamidullah Atar, one of the active CSO leaders in Marawi, an IDP himself and campaigner of the BMCSOP and Suara Miyamagoyag (Voice of Solidarity) echoes his call: “The legitimate demand of IDP is more than aid, food, electricity and money. It is the return to Marawi safely and with dignity that is foremost of everything.”
Samira Gutoc, another active Marawi IDP and Marawi CSO leader and ardent environmental and human rights advocate challenged the Philippines President: “Mr. President, you are an architect of martial law, please be the architect of Marawi rehabilitation. The plight of Marawi IDPs deserves urgent presidential certification of the Marawi compensation bill as priority.”
Sittie Johara Pacalundo, a woman leader of the Suara Miyamagoyag expressed a hopeful note: “We call for justice and not just tiis (wait). We are still holding on to the timeline given by the Task Force Bangon Marawi (TFBM) that we can already go home this year, in shaa Allah. We ask Allah for guidance and may He grant us more patience to surpass this test. Marawi will always be a HOME to us. Granting our immediate return is what our desire and what could heal us.”
Professor Padoman Paporo, Ph.D., who is among the more than a hundred thousand IDPs who remain displaced and one of the convenors of BMCSOP echoed a positive note: “I am optimistic that TFBM will be able to beat the timeline in December 2021 for our Kambalingan in MAA (Return to the Most Affected Area (MAA). This will be made possible through the meaningful and committed engagements of Marawi CSOs Convergence Group, BMCSOP with TFBM, Provincial Local Government Unit (PLGU) and the City LGU and CLGU that made possible the Monthly Monitoring of program and projects implementation in MAA.”
“For 4 years, our response to the Marawi crisis leads to the formation of self-help groups both within Marawi and in the host communities. In our small ways, our effort and support from international donors, no matter how lacking, helped address the basic needs of IDPs. Through SCLR, we have facilitated IDPs’ access to safe water in Cabasaran and Boganga, and livelihoods recovery of many IDP groups. No matter how small, but when the IDP’s work together, it is not just the physical project that is achieved but the empowerment and liberation from the traumatic experience,” concluded Sultan Al Samporna, one of ECOWEB’s area coordinators in its Marawi Response Program. ECOWEB in its Marawi crisis response has been promoting the sclr approach with support in the previous years from various partners to include Help Germany, Christian Aid, CORDAID, Johanniter International, AWO International, Good Neighbours, UMCOR, OPAPP, and Local to Global Protection, among others
International advocacy on localisation
In its international advocacy, ECOWEB focuses on the localization of humanitarian aid and participation revolution thru the SCLR approach. ECOWEB strongly believes that the local communities including the survivors have the capacity to lead the efforts for their response, recovery and rehabilitation. The SCLR approach recognizes that crisis-affected communities are always the first-responders – and that often they are involved in more significant local and immediate “humanitarian” interventions than those led by external aid actors. The emerging SCLR approaches focus on trying to maximise the potential of that autonomous local response – not only to help it better address immediate needs but also to strengthen longer term resilience.
“In all the crisis, the people and the communities are not just victims but first and foremost, they are survivors and responders,” explained Regina S. Antequisa, the founding Executive Director of ECOWEB. “In developing sclr approaches, we are not seeking rigid tools or blueprints, but rather adaptive methodologies that will keep changing according to context and our own cumulative experiences. These SCLR approaches are not being promoted as some new ‘silver-bullet’ to replace all externally-led humanitarian aid interventions. The aim is to promote a more balanced overall response that recognizes the primary importance of local agency and of supporting it, while still having externals ready to fill gaps as needed.”
Indicators of empowerment
“Empowerment is at the heart of SCLR approach. It is one of our guiding principles in our Marawi crisis response. Empowerment demands change of relationship between donors and recipient communities. It is at the core of our advocacy for the localization of aid,” explained ECOWEB’s director.
“Dignity is not just compensation but also accountability,” says Sultan Hamidullah Atar of Marawi. “Accountability for those individuals who serve as accomplice for the suffering of many IDPs after 4 years of being displaced.”
At present, at least 70,000 people from Marawi City remain displaced. They are scattered in several temporary relocation sites and communities. The Philippine government created the TFBM to oversee the rehabilitation of the city. Four years after the siege, residents of the central district of the city could not still visit their homes without permission from the military and the local government unit. It was during the planning of the rehabilitation that residents of the city were surprised to know that about half of the city’s land area is still part of a military reservation established by the American military in 1905. The reservation was turned over to the Philippine government sometime in 1947 but again re-declared as reservation in 1953. This proclaimed military reservation is now fully developed into private homes and commercial buildings who thought that the lands were owned by their families since time immemorial. The military is also planning to build another army camp within the city outside the military reservation area.
“An estimated 70 billion pesos was allocated by government for Marawi rehabilitation over the past 3 years plus foreign funding. We hope we could see documents or reports on these,” laments Samira Gutoc.
The Philippine government on several occasions declared that billions of funds were allocated for Marawi rehabilitation. IDP’s are wondering why until now the construction of roads are still unfinished. Some groups of IDPs where suspicious while others opt for direct engagement with the TFBM. The BMCSOP that ECOWEB helped to form in 2017 is among the groups that engage with the government.
“Our monitoring put some pressures to implementing agencies to fast-track and expedite infra projects in MAA,” says Prof. Padoman, an active leader of BMCSOP.
The strong aspiration for accountability and effort to engage with government is an indication of empowerment. It is not just addressed to the state actors but also to non-state actors. To whoever, it is addressed, it should be viewed as an indicator of a dynamic relationship between survivors and those who respond to their needs.
Localization and the control of humanitarian aid
“If there is a need to change in the relationship at the local level, so with at the international level. The localization commitment in the Grand Bargain of putting 25% of the humanitarian aid in the hands of the local actors is still far from being realized. It is sad to hear in studies that it is still around 2% of the total global humanitarian aid that goes through local actors,” ECOWEB Director Nanette Antequisa explained.
For ECOWEB putting more resources in the hands of the local actors means, more resources are made more accessible to the affected population of crisis. And through SCLR approach, this would mean more resources that would enable the affected population to help themselves better not only in responding to their emergency needs but also in finding durable solutions to the root causes of their crisis situation as an inherent nexus approach within sclr.
The Grand Bargain is an agreement between some of the largest donors and humanitarian organizations to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian action. Support of localized humanitarian responses was among the commitments made — signatories had agreed to direct at least 25% of international humanitarian assistance to local and national actors by 2020.
“Policy change is easier declared and agreed but making it work is a great challenge,” says Ms. Renefe Mosot-Padilla, ECOWEB’s sclr advisor. “We strongly advocate for cash transfers instead of delivering goods to IDP’s, unfortunately, only few international agencies agreed to this modality despite being an effective means of humanitarian response as contemplated in the Grand Bargain. Many opt to deliver goods, construct facilities and conduct trainings. Cash assistance is empowering to recipient families. It gives them freedom to decide what to prioritize.”
ECOWEB promotes cash transfer to groups of IDPs and directly to families. This is a key modality of assistance under the SCLR. The cash received by self-help groups were usually intended for improvement of livelihoods while those directly received by families were for personal and family needs.
“Cash transfer demands mutual trust, respect and accountability. Above all, it needs power shift. The control of the resources should be shared to the survivors and the local organizations who are familiar and knowledgeable of the context of the crisis. This is at the core of the localization campaign. But changing power relation often takes time,” Ms. Antequisa added.
As Marawi IDP’s continue to demand for accountability and the fulfillment of the government’s promises four years ago, local organizations – CSOs, NGOs and local communities also campaigned for the localization of aid and fulfillment of the promises of the Grand Bargain Agreement of the World Humanitarian Summit, five years ago.
“As always, good and best things come to those who wait and believe.” Prof. Padoman concluded.
CVA/2021-05-23
