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Executive Summary:
2nd SEACSN-Philippines National Workshop The
Role of Women in Philippine Peace Efforts
27-28 September 2002
The 2nd National Workshop on the Role of Women in Philippine
Peace Efforts was jointly organised by the Southeast
Asian Conflict Studies Network (SEACSN) – Philippines
and the La Salle Institute of Governance. The event was
funded by the Swedish Department for Research Co-operation
(SAREC), the research arm of the Swedish International
Development and Co-operation Agency (Sida). About thirty
participants attended.
The workshop objectives were to identify:
- To identify factors that facilitate and constrain
the role of women as a peacemakers,
- To identify what would assist women in developing
more effective actions for peace,
- To outline Filipino women’s agenda for peace
in terms of an overall perspective on issues of peace,
violence, and conflict.
These objectives were implemented through the panel sessions
on women in their peace efforts at both community and
national levels, and, on gender and peacemaking.
Panel Session 1 provided narratives of women at
the community level. Papers presented focused on the
experiences of women who had survived violence in Pampanga,
the Sama Dilaut women in Tambacan, Iligan City, the Tinguian
women in Abra, and the women in large, urban, poor community
organisations in Metro Manila. Panel Session 2 also
provided narratives of women, but focused on the national
level. Papers presented discussed women politicians in
Zamboanga City; the contributions of women in the Bicol
region in mainstreaming gender in peace building in the
country; women peace practitioners in Marawi City and
Lanao del Norte and how they handle stress; and finally,
the role of women in unifying the tri-peoples.
Panel Session 3 examined
gender theories. The papers concentrated
on the conflicting preconceptions
of the role of women, the applicability
of narrative analysis and semantic
webbing in understanding real-time
life stories of seven women;
the influences that contribute
to the formation of the personhood
or divinity of every adult; the
suffering of women during the
Philippine-American War; the
issues raised at the Fourth World
Conference on Women in Beijing,
and the contrasting images of
women during the revolutionary
period.
Two subsidiary workshops were held to flesh out the discussions
from the panel sessions. The first workshop examined
the factors that facilitate and/or constrain the role
of Filipino women as peacemakers. Participants were divided
into two workshop groups representing community and national
levels. The community level group identified the security
of land tenure and the issue of ancestral domain as factors
that facilitated the role of Filipino women as peacemakers.
The constraining factors were the lack of government
intervention to preserve indigenous cultures, the lack
of recognition of basic rights, the lack of support systems
within society, the non-recognition of involuntary settlers
and indigenous peoples, the establishment of peace zones,
and the development of government projects that cause
problems to the indigenous peoples. The group recommended
that there be social structures to support women’s
groups, that education should also be for men, that advocacy
be continued, that women should enter the political arena,
that knowledge should be shared, and that the media should
be used to expose uplifting stories on women.
The national level group identified schools, the election
of two women presidents, national-based women’s
organisations, globalised threats, the media, the church,
Edsa 1 and 2, civil society, and the enactment of women
and reproductive health-oriented national policy as both
facilitating and constraining factors. The group also
recommended further co-ordination amongst women’s
organisations working in the area of peace, the drafting
of women’s agenda for peace, the broadening of
women’s participation in drafting the above agenda,
and the assumption of key leadership positions in peace
organisations and processes.
The second workshop discussion focused on the Filipino
woman’s agenda for peace and the implications to
policy. The participants agreed to end women’s
invisibility by monitoring and guarding the implementation
of policies, changing attitudes, focusing on capacity
and capacity-building, and building support systems.
The conference ended with suggestions of follow-up workshops
in the future.
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