Laying Justice on the Ground: Moving from Land Disputes to Land RIghts

Breaking Barriers to Peace Project

The Breaking Barriers to Peace (BB) project continues to provide spaces for people's exercise of their role in conflict transformation and governance.

With support from the German Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (IFA), the BBP project aimed in 2013 to contribute to resolving conflicts by supporting its partners' struggles for the realization of key social justice legislations on land rights-the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (CARPER) and the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act (IPRA).

Farmers, indigenous peoples and partners in local government in the project areas in the provinces of Quezon, Pampanga, Negros Occidental, Agusan del Norte, and Misamis Oriental have consistently pointed at the denial of land rights as a fuel of conflicts.

Many issues that have been identified—flawed or insufficient government policies, programs, mechanisms, practices, and strategies—are being fleshed out for effective operationalization of reform calls and agreements. Most pressing among the concerns is the approaching end of the CARPER in 2014 and unclear succeeding legislation, insufficient support services for lands that have been successfully distributed through CARPER or awarded as ancestral domain, and the continuing weakness of the justice system to protect farmers and indigenous people in their land struggles.

The BALAY KALINAW MANIFESTO forged in 2012 (See pages 32 to 44 for the English, Filipino and Visayan versions.) guided dialogues and action plans. The project year culminated in a national policy forum on November 12 in Sulo Hotel, Quezon City that gathered representatives of people's organizations from the project areas, civil society groups, government agencies, and the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines and the Presidential Human Rights Committee.

The Philippine Coalition for the International Criminal Court thank all its partners in BBP and hope for continuing solidarity for laying justice on the ground and an enduring peace.