THE PHILIPPINE CAMPAIGN TO BAN LANDMINES (PCBL), AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH GENEVA CALL: SOME HISTORY (12/07/09)


       The PHILIPPINE CAMPAIGN TO BAN LANDMINES (PCBL) is the country civil society campaign group on the landmines issue since 1995.  It is the recognized affiliate of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), the Nobel Peace Prize laureate for 1997.  PCBL engages the Philippine government, the various rebel groups and the broader civil society to adopt the correct policy, measures, practice, views and action on the landmines issue, guided mainly by IHL, which includes the 1997 Ottawa Treaty, the 1996 Amended Protocol II and 2003 Protocol V to the 1980 Weapons Convention, and customary IHL rules.  On the government front, PCBL's main current concern is the passage of a "Philippine Comprehensive Law on Landmines" through House Bill No. 1054 and Senate Bill No. 1595 which PCBL drafted.  

       Because of the Philippine context of rebel groups’ production and use of landmines, which was also the case in other countries with internal armed conflict, PCBL along with several other country campaigns pioneered the global work of engaging “non-state actors” (NSAs, i.e. rebel groups) in a landmines ban.  To develop this work, it co-founded the Non-State Actors Working Group (NSAWG) of ICBL in 1997.   A PCBL person later co-founded Geneva Call as a spin-off from the NSAWG, with Geneva Call being formally launched in 2000 along with its “Deed of Commitment” which was mainly drafted by the same PCBL person.   It was the several years of groundwork by PCBL in engaging three rebel groups – the MILF, the RPM-P/RPA-ABB and the RPM-M/RPA - which helped Geneva Call secure their signatures on the “Deed of Commitment” in 2000-03.  PCBL also did the groundwork for and participated in Geneva Call's first field verification mission, which was to the MILF in 2002, to pilot this accountability mechanism under the "Deed of Commitment."      

       But in early 2004, PCBL broke working relations with Geneva Call because of its change towards what PCBL calls its “international NGO neo-colonialism” with a Northern hegemonist modus operandi which PCBL believes is ultimately not in the best interest of humanitarian and NSA engagement work in the global South.  Geneva Call is operating in the Philippines without the approval, cooperation and support of the country campaign, which in fact opposes those operations.  It expects that this position of PCBL as the country civil society campaign group on the landmines issue be respected by all concerned, especially by fellow Philippine and humanitarian NGOs, based on PCBL's track record and their knowledge of PCBL's leaders. 
As the country campaign on that issue, we should know best about dealing with it in our own home country. But PCBL continues to work with those three rebel groups on their commitments which were after all actually secured by PCBL, even as several of them, to their credit, have also broken off ties with Geneva Call.

       PCBL has also been exploring new possibilities of landmines issue engagement on the NSA/rebel front.
In 2008, PCBL brought that number to four, with the addition of a third communist breakaway faction, the MLPP-RHB, and the signatures of all four groups separately to a PCBL-developed "Rebel Group Declaration of Adherence to the International Humanitarian Law on Landmines," which is not limited to the 1996 Ottawa Treaty norm of a total ban on victim-activated anti-personnel mines but contains the key applicable norms, standards and undertakings under IHL on all kinds of landmines, including those under the 1996 Amended Protocol II on Mines, Booby-Traps & Other Devices and 2003 Protocol V on Explosive Remnants of War (ERW) of the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW).  On this basis, PCBL is now in the process of helping develop an international mechanism for adherence, assistance and accountability for such instruments deposited with ICBL.

        PCBL has been the long-time country researcher on the Philippines for the annual global Landmine Monitor Report since 1999 which is a global civil society mechanism developed by ICBL to fill a monitoring gap in the Ottawa Treaty.  In terms of monitoring of landmine incidents and violations, PCBL's monitoring has not been not limited to those attributed to the MILF, but also covers all other NSAs, inc. several not mentioned yet like the NPA, MNLF and ASG.   

       From 2000 to 2008, PCBL was the Vice-Chair for NGOs of the Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC) IHL National Committee.  With the NGO sector here, PCBL co-founded the new Civil Society Initiatives for International Humanitarian Law (CSI-IHL) in 2009.  Aside from PCBL's fellow civil society organizations in CSI-IHL, PCBL also has links with several civil society peace organizations in Mindanao. And aside from ICBL at the international level, PCBL has partnerships with the South-South Network (SSN) for Non-State Armed Group Engagement, Nonviolence International-Southeast Asia (NI-SEA), and its international humanitarian mine action partner, the Fondation Suisse de Deminage (FSD, Swiss Foundation for Mine Action) based in Geneva. FSD had once also participated together with PCBL in the Geneva Call mission to the MILF in 2002, wherein FSD provided technical advice in the analysis of landmine incidents and recoveries. PCBL can indeed relate positively and meaningfully with international NGOs from the global North as long as these North-South relations are based on equality and co-responsibility in the true spirit of internationalism.  
       In 2007, the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) Peace Panels accepted the proposal of PCBL and FSD for GRP-MILF joint mine/unexploded ordnance (UXO) clearance in Mindanao in the context of the peace process. This is currently subject to the final determination of the terms of reference by joint ceasefire committees. Work on this has however been delayed since August 2008 by a major disruption in the peace negotiations and ceasefire, with the parties agreeing to resume this process only in late July 2009.  Current prospects for progress have improved with, among others, mutual efforts to sustain the ceasefire and agreement on a civilian protection component in the peace process mechanisms.  And just this November 2009, FSD and PCBL held the first mine risk education (MRE) providers training course for NGO workers in conflict-affected areas of Mindanao, Southern Philippines.  "Making a difference on the ground" is just as important, if not more so, than shaping policy at the state and non-state political leadership levels. 

Thank you for your attention. 


Sol Santos
PCBL Coordinator

Fred Lubang
PCBL International Representative