BOHOL Local Monitoring Board (LMB) acts as the big brother to the country’s peace advocates when it becomes a learning model for the five provinces with set up but dormant human rights monitoring teams.
And like them, the vigilant and working Bohol LMB also hopes to learn something from these groups at a workshop set here on the third week of this month.
Visiting Bohol this December 16-18 are LMBS in San Jose Tarlac, Bondoc Peninsula in Quezon Province, Negros Occidental, Masbate and Sorsogon, all dormant boards wanting to learn from Bohol.
LMB Chairman Romeo Teruel said the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) brings to Bohol the four set up LMBs across the country.
It presents to us a perfect opportunity to learn from other peace building processes across the country and at the same time enrich our processes, says Romeo Teruel, LMB
In efforts to cascade monitoring of the observance of the agreements entered into by the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the Communist Party of the Philippines, New Peoples Army and the National Democratic Front, both camps put in the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC).
But even with the mechanism set up in the national levels, Boholanos saw an opportunity to bring down the level of monitoring to the provinces and the OPAPP was just too supportive of the move, Teruel explained.
The setting up of the local LMB by virtue of an executive order by the governor pushed members to actively engage in monitoring insurgency related human rights violations as well as put up human rights education and advocacy forums credited now in the drastic decrease in reported violations, claimed Dr. Asteria Estoreon of the local LMB.
Operated in an area with other innovative practices in peace building anchored in poverty alleviation, people empowerment and cultural-revolution, Bohol significantly figured out in the country’s peace map.
Now with record successes in the implementation of the national military template on its special operations teams (SOTs), Bohol experience has also been widely credited as responsible in stabilizing the peace situation. (PIA)
