About the Logo

Blue represents peace, human for the citizens in general, green laurel is sustainable peace. Stylish first letters, orb for O or encompassing peace/universality, main dove carrying the laurel while stylish V for voices. Secondary dove to represent the next generatio. Spreading wings of the M (movement) for peace, transcending circles. The black text is not only contrasting the blue color but represents the beginning of the universe, not darkness but calmness…that’s peace. The open-mouthed human face represents the “call for peac”. The stlyish lines and directions try to capture continuity and fluidity whole white space for purity/sincerity. Human figure facing left, it’s going against the flow of the dominant force.

Rationale

It is time for a negotiated political settlement to the armed conflicts in the Philippines.

People’s voices are starting to be galvanized around the need in arriving at a consensus on peaceful solutions to the structural causes of the armed conflicts. Failure to do so will allow the armed conflicts to fester and take their toll on society. The Philippines has not taken-off because it has been stymied by these drawn-out armed conflicts whose root problems are continually unaddressed.

Achieving a negotiated political settlement of the armed conflict between the main conflict actors – the Government of the Philippines (GPH) on one hand, and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the National Democratic Front ( NDF) on the other – is crucial to move forward genuine development not only in Mindanao but also in the whole country. The 2011 World Development Report describes how armed conflicts, already rooted in maldevelopment and violations of basic human rights, further disrupt efforts towards development and address mass poverty. The report further states that — “New poverty data reveal that poverty is declining for much of the world, but countries affected by violence are lagging behind. For every 3 years a country is affected by major violence (battle deaths or excess deaths from homicides equivalent to a major war), poverty reduction lags behind by 2.7 percentage points. No low-income fragile or conflict-affected country has yet achieved a single MDG. People in fragile and conflict-affected countries are more than twice as likely to be undernourished as those in other developing countries, more than three times as likely to be unable to send their children to school, twice as likely to see their children die before age 5, and more than twice as likely to lack clean water. On average, a country that experienced majt violence over the period from 1981 to 2005 has a poverty rate 21 percentage points higher than a country that saw no violence.”

The decades-long communist-led insurgency and the Bangsa Moro struggle for self-determination in Mindanao have bled the country of much-precious resources, snuffed thousands of young bright lives and scuttled national development.

In the Mindanao conflict alone, more than 120,000 persons have been killed and more than PHP270 billion has been wasted which could have been invested to build all the classrooms to educate our youth, created jobs for the unemployed and fed our hungry denizens. The conflicts have sapped the genius of a generation and have contributed in retarding growth and bred a host of other problems.

The armed conflicts have been waged in the name of the people but sadly a huge number of the victims of the combat have been ordinary civilians either displaced from their communities or killed in the crossfire. This includes families of soldiers, mujahideens and revolutionaries alike. Clearly, the Filipino people are the main stakeholders in these conflicts. It is thus imperative that the people themselves help craft and determine a peaceful and just path out of these conflicts.

A large cross-section of the Filipino people is weary of the conflict. They want to live in a just peace to be able to harness the genius of the nation in achieving the vast potential that they inherently possess. They excel abroad as nurses, doctors, professionals, caregivers, construction workers, entertainers, helpers and professionals. However, they are mired in poverty, corruption, gutter politics, underdevelopment and are virtually trapped in socio-economic and political malaise at home.

We need to consolidate these voices into one loud thunder that will reverberate across the nation and into the tables of the peace negotiations, the jungles and fronts of the battlefields, the grim corners of board and war rooms, the damp and fetid camps, the halls and chambers of policy-makers and the determined caucuses of collectives in far-flung tents and apartments.

It is time for the people’s voices for peace, justice and progress to be heard.

It is time for the people’s voice to be heeded.

Towards this end, the Initiatives for International Dialogue (IID) will launch a ONE MILLION VOICES FOR PEACE IN THE PHILIPPINES campaign.

Objectives

The main objective of the campaign is to help achieve a political settlement to the armed conflicts in the Philippines by leveraging and mobilizing people’s voices to prod the main conflict actors towards a more resolute peace negotiation.

Specifically, the campaign aims to:

• Raise the awareness of the Filipino people about the necessity for a peaceful settlement to the country’s conflicts.
• Broaden and galvanize a peace constituency in the country.
• Broaden international solidarity support for peace in the Philippines.
• Provide the main conflict actors with a tangible form of support for the peace process.

Campaign Features

The campaign will gather “voices” of people from all over the Philippines and the rest of world to signify their desire for an end to the conflict in the country and for the conflict actors to work for a peaceful, just and comprehensive political settlement to the armed conflicts in the Philippines.

The “voices” can be expressed in different forms: signatures to the campaign petition, “likes” in a Facebook account and website of the campaign, twits, photos, blogs, articles or any other multi-media platform.

At the end of the campaign, a media campaign will be developed based on the “voices” that are collected leading to the formal presentation of the campaign output to the respective peace panels of the GPH, MILF and the NDF – the main conflict actors involved in the armed conflict in the country.

Networks

While spearheaded by IID, the campaign will be adopted by national, regional and international civil society networks.

Foremost of these networks are the Mindanao Peaceweavers (MPW)- the broadest peace network for Mindanao; Kilos Kapayapaan at Katarungan- the newly launched national formation of peace networks in the country representing 6 major networks and the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC).

Kilos para sa Kapayapaan at Katarungan has adopted the campaign as their maiden collective activity.