Excellencies, Distinguished Participants, Good afternoon.

Let me first thank the Permanent Missions of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, El Salvador, and South Sudan, the African Union, the Nonviolent Peaceforce, and other partners for co-organizing today’s roundtable discussion on “Civilian-centered approaches to POC: What works, why, and advancing acceptance within the international system.”

The Philippines is a proud partner of this event, which coincides with the Protection of Civilians (POC) week here at the United Nations.

Commitment to POC

Protection of civilians, especially in situations of armed conflict, will always be a priority for the Philippines.

Protection of civilians in situations of armed conflict has been embedded in Philippine laws, including the Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide and Other Crimes Against Humanity (RA 9851) and the Special Protection of Children in Situations of Armed Conflict Law (RA 11188).

We also support the view that respect for International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law is crucial to protect the civilian population and civilian objects in general in areas of conflict.

Nonviolent Peaceforce in the Philippines

We note the Nonviolent Peaceforce’s proposal that integrating unarmed civilian and community-led protection approaches is particularly important in the context of sustainable peace and transitions.

Since 2009, Nonviolent Peaceforce has been a long-standing CSO partner of the Philippine government in its peace process with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the southern Philippines, being the first international NGO to become a member of the International Monitoring Team (IMT) under its Civilian Protection Component (CPC). 

Nonviolent Peaceforce has been recognized by the Joint Normalization Committee (JNC) to participate in supporting and complimenting the Bangsamoro Normalization processes on the ground, affirming the organization’s significant impact in its partnership with the Government of the Philippines (GPH) - MILF Peace Process.

Indeed, this civilian-led protection work complemented and strengthened the peace process and didn’t not interfere or stifle government’s interests or aspirations. 

Further, the Bangsamoro example is one where unarmed civilian protection work was done successfully in a non-UN peacekeeping setting. This example shows the importance of POC in very different environments and demonstrates how this work contributed to the sustained peace process carefully undertaken by the Philippine Government.

Lessons learned

Finally, I would like to cite the following principles and lessons that we learned in today’s roundtable discussions: 

• deep, respectful engagement with local actors that allows their full participation in decision-making and actions for protection is critical for successful POC;
• respecting the primacy of local actors is key to sustainable peace because it builds on indigenous knowledge and practices, develops new relationships of trust and cooperation, and breaks habits and cycles of violence; and
• participation of local communities helps them adopt new attitudes and nonviolent modes of operating through dialogue and peaceful interaction that get embedded in community processes going forward.

We hope that information sessions like these, by showing evidence of success, will encourage the UN and other international policymakers to see this work as a welcome complement to the UN’s POC work and consider fully accepting and supporting it as part of their repertoire of POC strategies and practices.  

Thank you.