Editor's note: The author will speak at the IAG Muslim Mindanao Autonomy Roundtable Discussion Series at the Senate of the Philippines on Aug. 17, 2015 on international experiences in political transitions and peacebuilding. We are re-posting this article on the same topic from our archives. Sam Chittick spent several years of his career with AusAID and has been actively involved in development works in Africa, Mozambique, Malawi, South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, China, and now the Philippines. He is currently the international advisor of the Facility for Advisory Support for Transition Capacities or FASTRAC. This transcript is from his talk at the “Forum on Development Opportunities and the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro” – co-organized by IAG – in Makati City on Sept. 23, 2014. Some parts have been slightly edited and paraphrased for clarity and brevity.

 

Good morning everyone. I feel a little overwhelmed to be asked to speak here this morning. When I walked in and looked around the room, I realized I was speaking to a roomful of people who probably know more about this topic than I do which is a good place to start in the sense that I look forward to the discussions and questions that would come from this.

 

What I was asked to talk on are the international experiences that have relevance to the Bangsamoro. So I’ll go over a couple of core things for transition that relate to specific development challenges and I’ll try to draw in examples from international experiences that I think might be relevant.

 

But as I said that when I looked around the room I see people with decades of experience in creating jobs in this environment in the private sector, people who have worked on other regions of the world, community leaders, religious leaders, and elected officials and I fully recognize that these Filipinos who are working and interested in these issues will define the responses to this. So I can only offer ideas, and suggestions, or ways that you might be able to take from international experiences and not anything that would define the way you operate.

 

First I should mention that FASTRAC is a joint facility working with GPH and MILF, it was launched by the UN and World Bank with support from Australia, New Zealand and it was set up in solid running last 2013.

 

We should first recognize that the context of the Philippines and looking at international experiences, it’s worthwhile to know that the central western Mindanao conflict is a subnational conflict and has slightly different characteristics from all other contexts in other countries that have achieved a peace agreement and are trying to achieve development after that.

 

First let me cite a couple of words that would differentiate this conflict. Subnational conflicts are not that unusual. There have been 49 documented cases from 1946 until 2008. So even if it’s different, it’s not entirely unique. It tends to have high fiscal economic cost and lasts for a long time as we’ve seen here. Military victories are extremely rare and future stability of the victory is often questionable. Most political settlements that resolve these involve additional devolution of political power whether it’s in Europe or Southeast Asia or will result to independence as in the case of Sudan.

 

The process of decentralization or autonomy requires careful planning. There are a couple of key risks like that an excessive speed in transition can lead to local elite capture and a lack of accountability. There are also a couple of important issues to consider like the protection of minorities, creating economic confidence, careful demobilization, isolation of extremists, and the transitional justice issues to give people the sense that they are truly moving on from a turbulent past.

 

It’s also important to note that development is not necessarily the answer to conflict. The Asia Foundation conducted a fascinating study called “The Contested Corners of Asia” which came out last year. They found out that development alone does not reduce conflict and subnational conflicts. In fact, in some cases, development can exacerbate conflicts.

 

Development can increase resources resulting to increase in weapons and can increase the intensity of the conflict. So the lesson is that political settlement in this regard is the key. Development is what is achieved [from] a subset of political achievements. The political achievement is a precursor to development. In development challenges, we need to keep in mind that none of this is possible until the completion of the political phase which we all know is in the good hands of Congressman [Rufus] Rodriguez and colleagues in Congress and Senate.

 

For all those interested in the development in the Bangsamoro it’s important to know the considerations of development and possible lessons from abroad. Just a little sidetrack here, I started my career working in Mozambique in the mid-1990s, which followed a couple of decades of very intense civil war, massive displacement, and all those costs in terms of lives and the economy. As a young Australian in Mozambique I knew little about war and knew nothing about displacement or at least what it’s like to be bullied or to live through years of unrest, uncertainty, and fear. So the only thing that I could really do was to listen. I think in a way that was the most useful lesson I got because I still think it’s the most important thing for any international partner who wants to be of use in a context like the Bangsamoro to do.

 

I ended, with a little bit of good fortune and curiosity, working on a thing called the open reintegration fund which was implemented by GTZED, IOM, and some other international partners, which is a program for giving former soldiers a new start, a chance to learn new skills, have access to capital for a small business, to make networks with others who are not necessarily combatants. It was a fascinating program. I once had lunch with some of my colleagues; two of them realized that they were from opposite sides of the same battle eight years ago. I was expecting a moment of tension. Instead, a lot of laughter and storytelling were thrown around at that time. And that process of moving on was really eye-opening for me.

 

Through that exposure and working on that program and obviously my day to day interactions with my colleagues there, I learned to see conflict and development through the eyes of people who have suffered the direct consequences. I learned to ask a couple of key questions which I translated to the current context I’m showing you on the screen. So I think in asking what other development lessons that can be learned from the Bangsamoro, it’s important to ask what changes will the average Mindanaon want from the Bangsamoro, what will make a difference to people’s lives and their day to day interactions, and where are the opportunities to the people in this room from government to nongovernment and national and international?

 

In my experience in Mozambique, I’ll cite three of the things that may provide answers to these questions. First is security, people want to feel safe and they want to feel that security in their community is changing. It doesn’t necessarily mean the absence of guns or a change in the security forces around but they want to feel safer. They want justice, they want some kind of recognition of past grievances, they want a connection between their personal stories and the suffering that they have had and the higher level political transition. Without that, it will come out as a hollow transition to them. Lastly, they want increased opportunities to provide for their families.

 

One of the key point references in looking internationally is a study that was done in 2011 which was the World Development Report which focused on public security and development. The essential finding in that was strengthening legitimate institutions and governance to provide citizens security, justice, and jobs is crucial to break cycles of violence. It’s a fairly short summary of an extremely long report. As I go through I’ll pick up some points from that report and I’ll also join examples from other studies. Just a couple of the key messages from the report: One is the context that there is no specific recipe that will solve the problem and create the magical development for the Bangsamoro. Next is the focus on outputs. Outputs are easy. There is a school of thought, which the East Timor suffered from in the early parts of their transition focusing on putting out laws, and creating commissions. They didn’t do enough of basic services for people’s actual lives. This was part of the frustration which boiled up in 2005-2006 with riots as a result. The third is work through national institutions aligned with local priorities and avoid creating parallel channels or fast ways of getting things done. It can help in the short term but they can’t help in the long run institutional building. This is often difficult and slow but it’s a much better foundation for a long term development.

 

The authors of that report characterized building legitimate institutions as a push and pull between two elements. One is transforming institutions while the other one is restoring confidence. So we need to work on both sides of that.

 

There are two kinds of legitimacy. One is process legitimacy which is looking at the way decisions are made, the other one is performance legitimacy which is how you actually deliver services on the ground. So there are two parts in the way that you do it and the result that comes from what you’ve done, the ways in which people determine whether the institutions of the Bangsamoro are considered legitimate.

 

Let’s move on to the first of these three elements, which is citizen security. The practical and symbolic elements of security are both important. Aside from its impact on people’s day to day life but also because it’s the most visible element of a state or the most concrete manifestation of state’s power. If done well, reforms around security will bolster the credibility of the government and also enhance the trust of the people. Otherwise, if not done well, it will undermine them.

 

A well-functioning security sector does not only reinforce the law but it builds legitimacy of legal enforcement, creates incentives for the people to respect the laws of the country from an internal conviction rather than use of force. Security has to be guaranteed for all. If not, it will reinforce divisions and exclusions. There’s an opportunity actually from the shift from proposing on threats by groups which characterizes the relationship of the state and the MILF previously, compared to a shift from threats by an individual, treating it more as a crime and justice issue rather than a military issue. There are obviously two parts of citizen security. One is enforcement capacity we typically see as the policing, the ability of deterring criminals. The other is the judicial capacity. I’ll go to that later on.

 

One example is the experience of Timor-Leste. The general consensus is that from 1999-2014 overall security has improved dramatically. But if you look at the graph on the next slide it shows that the general public perception is that people, from 2001, 38% of them said that they are very or somewhat concerned about security in their locality. That climbed to 78% in 2008. So the general perception of the people on the ground is that security in their locality was getting worse and becoming more problematic at the same time that the general consensus amongst international analysts was that the security situation was improving. Thankfully in the last survey in 2013 it went back a little bit to 64%.

 

The key lesson is that local safety and security for people’s day to day lives is not necessarily directly correlated with increasing state capacity. There has to be a translation to what the people actually see and feel on the ground. Timor-Leste went to a number of conflict points during this period. Obviously they had post-referendum violence, there’s a collapse of military and police in 2006 which led to more than a hundred thousand people being displaced, and there are a couple of assassination attempts to the prime minister. But in general they’re building investments in the new police force and the military [and this] had led to greater state capacity. At the same time the public feels more secure. I guess the word of caution there is not to focus solely on state capacity.

 

There are some opportunities that come from three possible areas of focus that might be of relevance for the Bangsamoro. The first is trying to reduce different forms of arrogance, domestic violence, or violence perpetuated by state security forces. There are a couple of acts on the way that are already on this that might help in information. One is the Bangsamoro conflict monitoring system, and the other is local efforts against rido or horizontal conflicts which The Asia Foundation has been involved with for many years. Another opportunity is improving perceptions of citizen security as in the case of Timor-Leste. Last is the strengthening of state and non-state security structures. To be done well, this requires long term commitment but it is a chance to make communities part of the action and part of the solution.

 

I’m sure that some of our donors in the room are interested in state and non-state security structure in the future. There are some similarities in the draft BBL and what’s in the World Development Report in 2011. One critical element of that is community policing. Community policing hasn’t only been tried in the Philippines but also in other parts of the world and there are studies which suggest that it is really a useful way to redefine the relationship between the security forces and the communities they are trying to protect.

 

Another symbolic but also important thing is the redeployment of forces which is already flagged through the different agreements of the CAB. The last are the different mechanisms of public accountability for the Bangsamoro police. With any new institution comes an opportunity to define the way that institution is held accountable. So there are huge opportunities at the moment for a resilient society to be involved in the discussion around what is it that they would see as appropriate accountability measures for that new police force.

 

Moving to the second key point around justice, the findings from the international experiences suggest that political transition is obviously necessary as a start for development. But that is not sufficient, there needs to be a robust process for managing and dealing with the past. Formal and informal justice systems need to be part of that solution especially in the transition where the people have the chance to voice what they have experienced. The key point here is that every transitional justice process is different.

 

In the Philippines, the Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Commission is being established and I understand it will start in a few weeks. The mandate of that is different to its equivalent from Timor-Leste; that’s appropriate, because the process of what will make sense to the people on the ground in each of these cases is going to be different. The drive, conflict, and experiences are different and therefore the mechanism you use to move beyond that is going to be different. To cite a few examples, in East Timor they have the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliationfrom 2002-2005. Its role was to document abuses of the 25 years; it was called a community-based reconciliation process. There are a couple of elements there that I think are quite intriguing in relation to the Philippine context. One is that it required full disclosure from anyone who was giving evidence to that commission but there was no guarantee of honesty from prosecution so anything you said can be used by the court or the legal authorities.

 

There was one particular challenge which I also thought was useful in the context of the Bangsamoro. Survey suggested that people thought that political elites can continue their old grievances, their political issues; they could continue fighting their old battles in the political level. But everyone on the ground was expected to reconcile from day one and that perception of/amongst the population was a perennial issue for that commission. In parallel to that commission, there were a couple of programs that were put together. The first one or the one that’s relevant here is the Ministry of Social Solidarity of the Timor government together with the UNDP and UNITAR which focused on trying to integrate internally displaced people and refugees. This is I guess one of the lessons in having not just the process of reconciliation or the commission to enable the people to allow their voices to be heard, but at the same time providing something concrete for them to feel that the problems they are facing are being addressed. The summary was 13,000 returnees were assisted. In the latter part of this program between 2009 and 2012 the entire caseload of the bulk of refugees was cleared and the capacity that was developed through that program was subsequently transferred to what was called the Department of Peace-building and Social Cohesion under that ministry. Other than opportunities in the justice sphere, it’s important to note that inclusion is critically important. One interesting example is birth registration for the marginalized. People here may not know but a lot of the excluded communities, particularly those aligned with the MILF or other former rebel groups in Mindanao are [not part of registration processes or find it difficult to be part of]. That has serious effects, for example now that the government, the MILF, and others are starting to discuss the kind of programs that would be relevant [to] former soldiers, former combatants and their families. If you have a community of people who are outside the former registration process, it raises difficulties in access to justice and access to services. One simple thing to be done could be a birth registration process. DSWD has already trialed this together with some of their partners in conflict areas in Mindanao and having mobile registration processes. Things like that can be simple but very important for building bridges between the marginalized and the rest of the community.

 

Another is opportunities around the transitional justice system which in turn create a bridge between formal and informal systems. An international study a couple of years ago looked at the informal trade in land and there is a huge amount of land which is traded in Mindanao on the back of pieces of papers witnessed by the barangay captain. The movement of those assets falls outside of any kind of legal structure and any financial market. It’s a real hindrance to allowing people to access the capital or to mobilize those assets for investment.

 

The Asian Foundation study into rido years ago found that land is always a key driver of horizontal conflict and I guess there’s limited progress on this in the rest of rural parts of the Philippines as well as some urban. There is a new opportunity with the new institution and a new chance to look at this issue for new solutions. Public financial management may not seem at first to be a tool of justice but it can be if it’s used as a tool for directing funds to underserved groups and ensuring information is available to them at the local level. Social production programs can be vehicles for inclusion and healing past differences by making sure that people receive benefits from the state which they were previously excluded from.

 

The CDD or the community-driven development program can be a way to allow these same groups to make decisions on resources that directly respond to what they think their priorities are and not what the government thinks their priorities are or other authorities for that matter. In the Philippines there are several examples of CDD programs which may or may not be appropriate for the Bangsamoro.

 

People see corruption as a fundamental element in justice and anticorruption measures can be its reverse. They can be used to demonstrate that public resources can be used for public good. There is a role here for the local community and civil society organizations. The kind of the things that have been used in other contexts include citizen report cards, community support cards, participatory budgeting, public expenditure tracking surveys; these should be all part of the agenda of this administration. Just to give some weight behind that, probably the program of this nature is the Kecamatan Development Program in Indonesia. An 88% of the population surveyed felt that the program funds were being properly administered. That was a massively higher response than their perception of spending under other government programs. And the difference was that they had an input into deciding what the priorities were and they could obviously see the result.

 

A couple of questions before we leave justice are related to jobs. These are not ones that I address through other international experiences but questions that I would pose to you which might come up in the presentation of other colleagues and in the discussions. How can this Bangsamoro process be a trigger for broader convergence? For example how can the Transitional Justice and the Reconciliation Commission be used to address grievances of all citizens and not just one group? The second is, how can these new institutions that are created be effective in bringing this Moro groups together? The last is what space can be created for the vibrant Mindanao civil society to help hold this new government accountable?

 

Moving to the third element on jobs, I should note here that the private sector will drive most of the job growth in the Bangsamoro. In the Philippines the private sector accounts for around 80% of the GDP so we cannot rely on public sectors alone to create these jobs. However most of that comes from small and medium enterprises.

 

There are large businesses in ARMM currently that will continue in the Bangsamoro, but there are limits to the risks that those kinds of investments will take. It’s important to know the important obstacles to investment. One is local security, the second is rule of law, and the third is infrastructure to enable access to marketers.

 

From international experiences, there are four basic things that need to be addressed in creating jobs: regulatory environment, infrastructure, skills development, and direct market interventions.

 

I think it’s important to ask who the jobs are for. The challenge in this respect is that the Bangsamoro is different from the rest of the country. As I said before, outside investors are often reluctant. There is little local capital to call upon and the skills bases are lower in Mindanao as surveys say. It’s also important to note that the ex-combatant group is different from other groups; they’ve had a different working life, different skills, and different needs.

 

The UN did a study which identified three different tracks that can help guide decision-making for a sustainable employment creation. They identified track 1 as a stabilization track, these are programs that typically target conflict-affected individuals which aim to provide a quick peace dividend, for example, by targeting former combatants, out of school youth, returnees or the internally displaced. The second track is local reintegration track; this focuses on the creation of employment at the local level, rebuilding communities, and consolidating the peace process. This typically is done through classic development, economic recovery programs, etc. The last is called the transition track which is the one that climbs up toward the end. It involves supporting capacities in the institutions; I think it focuses more on the parameters to which you create long term employment. I think it’s useful just in terms of framing our understanding of what is important and how you sequence these things for those who are looking to invest and create jobs in the Bangsamoro. An example: Aceh, 9 years after is generally peaceful. However there is a wide perception amongst the surveys that government rule in Aceh failed to translate into improvements in the daily lives of the people. Poverty and unemployment are still well above the national average in Indonesia. There is still endemic corruption, diversion of public revenues, and patronage is still a big problem. This is translated to a general perception that Aceh is not open for business. The Jakarta Globe mentioned that Aceh only managed to attract investments that focus more on natural resource extraction, the majority of which are not large job creation industries. They provide little opportunities for local people and this was one of the grievances that caused rebellion in the first place.

 

One of the lessons there is the importance of creating openings for a previously excluded group and for local employment. I would like to move on with an example from Africa, this is the joint result of programs created by the government of Liberia, NGOs, and the UN which focused purely on combatants. They provided them training, counseling, and a little bit of a startup capital for those who want to go into business. It was successful in shifting these combatants from criminal activities into farming; 61% of the people who went through this training were most subsequently less likely to signup even though they were offered four times as much as to join those fights. This also shows that labor intensive programs can be on its scale; they employed people in this program in a period of 2 years on local construction.

 

It is important to remember that jobs are not only demands but are also supplies. We need to remember investing in people. The skills available in these conflict areas, as I mentioned before, are generally lower than in non-conflict areas so targeted investments on these skills can provide a good return. There needs to be a clear link between the demand and supply. The Bangsamoro institutions that are being created and the transitional bodies offer good opportunities for those kinds of skills investments. One key lesson that I got from all the programs for combatants is that you need to directly ask the combatants what their interests and priorities are then tailor these with appropriate assistance.

 

In the program that I worked on initially in Mozambique, we did assessments every year. We went back to the communities and asked how their attitudes changed over time and how their needs, training, and skill needs were changing. That kind of assistance needs to be long term, comprehensive, and transparent. The most successful element of that program that we had was in formal apprenticeship; that was the clearest thing for someone to go from training to a full-time sustainable job. The same thing was observed also in other countries.

 

Agriculture is critical in the Bangsamoro context both small scale and large scale because it’s the largest driver of incomes in livelihood. So the kind of things there that would make sense are extension services, and combining technical skills with input supplies on basic business training skills.

 

The infrastructures that go along with that like the roads and post-harvest facilities are also critical not only here in the Philippines but in other countries as well. Connecting farmer associations with buyers can also be a good investment.

 

The US Institute of Peace had a study back in 2012 on how business can help foster peace. They found out that they can do a number of possible useful contributions. One is providing jobs and economic opportunity and also paying taxes; respecting the rule of law, human rights, labor rights, and environmental standards; espousing principles of good corporate citizenship… We’ve seen some evidence of that here in the Philippines. The challenge for the Bangsamoro is to create incentives that will encourage businesses to practice good governance. We should know that the ARMM as I understand has only 22 major investments since it was created, but a number of those are the highest tax payers in the region and they provide secure long term jobs where jobs are often hard to come by. So other ways in addressing this include something called the Bangsamoro Financing Facility which is currently being considered by the World Bank, JICA, the MILF and the private sectors. This is to determine financing gaps for the Bangsamoro which can be addressed through such a facility. There are obviously risks to private sector investment and growth in this kind of conflict environments… There is a risk in combining political and business power in local areas, and obviously there is the potential for continuous corruption. The way of addressing those is through the legitimate institutions which need to be created under the Bangsamoro government.

 

A question for policy makers: how can the growth hubs in Mindanao, generally Davao, General Santos, Iligan, Cagayan de Oro, be a trigger for Bangsamoro growth and in what ways can those markets be connected? How can the Bangsamoro take advantage of an above per capita sharing? We all know that there are a lot of Muslim Filipinos who are working in the Middle East. How can that be used to promote growth? How can improvements in ARMM governance provide a head start for the Bangsamoro?

 

We all know the history between the MILF and the ARMM and the President’s characterization of the ARMM as a failed experiment. Still, there are lessons there. My observation on international experiences and its relevance to the Bangsamoro is that every post agreement situation is unique. We love theories and elements but the focus needs to be on potential opportunities and not recipes and I think we have to be reminded of that before we look for answers overseas. We shouldn’t assume that what worked in another country or even what worked in the rest of the Philippines will be relevant for the Bangsamoro.

 

The second is that inclusivity is essential. All legal voices must be included at the table in every institution that we are creating. The evidence for not doing this is the violence that erupted in Timor-Leste in 2000s where part of the country felt that they were being excluded. In Mozambique there was tremendous move towards peace through the 1990s and 2000s, but in the last 18 months, they’ve seen resurgence of violence because there was a perceived one-party state. So there’s the challenge for them to share the wealth and power with other parts of the country.

 

The last is around accountability which is obviously critical. Checks and balances particularly for a new government in an administration led by the MILF which is gaining new experience in governing will be absolutely critical. There are also likely to be shortcomings, technically, in that new administration. The MILF themselves recognize that they do not have a huge cohort of people who are technically able to take over the reins of the new bureaucracy. So the strong push for accountability seems to be a real prospect for better governance. I think I’ll leave it there. Those are the three lessons: every situation is unique, inclusivity is essential, and accountability will be really important in terms of creating the kind of institutions which would be legitimate in the eyes of the Bangsamoro people to push for peace and stability which the political agreement set the framework for. Thank you very much.