Women at the negotiating table: What price peace?

By Diana G. Mendoza

People in the circle of Miriam Coronel-Ferrer couldn’t recall how many times she has changed her mobile phone number since she became a news subject because of her role as chairperson of the government peace panel. She said she has also deleted her Facebook account although she still maintains a Twitter account, despite what she calls misogyny in the social media.

“The misogyny is too much in the unregulated world of social media,” she told journalists who attended “Writing Peace: A Gender and Peace Media Workshop,” which was held last week by the Women’s Feature Service and the Women’s Peace Table. She was referring to the derisive memes and tweets about her. “I think it would be helpful if we raise the bar in ethical behavior and norm setting in the social media,” she commented.

Fighting for better social media behavior may appear to be Ferrer’s next battleground, because being a female in a powerful position dominated by males has put her under public scrutiny.

In her talk before journalists, Ferrer recalled the case of English actress Emma Watson of the Harry Potter film series who addressed the United Nations to represent its “HeforShe” gender equality campaign.

After addressing the UN, Watson faced threats and criticisms in social media, but kept her cool. But her detractors did the opposite; they just wouldn’t stop disparaging her. About this practice, Ferrer said: “Do we really have to suffer this? Certainly, we cannot just say roll with the punches.”

Ferrer, the country’s first woman government peace panel chair and the world’s first woman chief negotiator to have signed a major peace agreement (the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro [CAB], the final political settlement between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front [MILF] that ended 17 years of negotiations), is one of only three women in the peace panel.

The other two are Secretary Teresita Quintos-Deles, the first woman Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, and Secretary Yasmin Busran-Lao, chair of the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos.

Deles and Ferrrer have received as a lot of flak on how they were handling the peace negotiations, among them malicious memes in social media. Busran-Lao, even before being invited to the government peace panel negotiating with the MILF starting in 2011, has suffered even more, including Islamophobia, during her early years as a women’s rights activist.

Samira Gutoc-Tomawis of the Young Moro Professionals who spoke in the same media workshop, recalled that Busran-Lao was once asked: “Do you have a tail?” and “Are your kababayans (countrymen) war freaks/juramentado?”

This “80s thinking,” and the “attitude of othering and labeling” is part of the country’s colonial history, according to Tomawis, during which “the Moros were separately treated with different laws while Christianized Filipinos were synonymous with being civilized” and Moros were referred to as outlaws, pirates, assassins, murderers, and trouble makers.

Tomawis said being in Mindanao means being “minoritized” historically due to “forced migration from the Christian north to the Muslim south; the Martial Law repression that killed an estimated 100,000; continuing militarization; the anti-terror bill that profiles mostly Muslims; the geographical distance from policy and decision-making,” and hence, poor governance and the cycle of poverty and conflict.

On the other hand, reverse discrimination among Moros also has its roots. “The negative construct started when Filipinism became strongly equated with Christianity in the view of the Muslims, who found it difficult to accept their proposed identity as Filipinos during the beginnings of the Philippine Republic,” said Tomawis.

A journalist-participant in the workshop with a family history of conversions and intermarriages shared that “my grandmother and grandfather did not consider themselves Filipinos” because they were Muslims.

Ferrer, Deles and Lao are joined by three other women in the peace table: Iona Jalijali, director and head of the secretariat of the government peace negotiating panel, Zenonida Brosas, undersecretary and deputy director general of the National Security Council and head of the government technical working group, and lawyer Anna Tarhata Basman, who heads of the legal team.

Who knows what they have also had to put up with as women working in the world of men?

Ferrer said women at the peace table and all the Bangsamoro women working and negotiating for peace in their roles as mothers, wives and citizens share the same situation; the only difference is that the role of women in appointive public positions is magnified.

Being in these posts has positive and negative consequences, and this happens everywhere. “Women are measured against two standards: against men, and against women,” said Ferrer. “Women at the peace tables are easily approached by other women. They embrace us, talk to us about their experiences and stories and tell us we inspire other women.” The negative side: being subjected to the biases and prejudices against women.”

Lao said working and negotiating for peace has also cost her her friendship with a fellow female negotiator on the other side of the peace table, because they might be questioned for just being in touch with each other or being seen in public. “It’s like losing a sister. Hindi na kami nakakapag-usap (We don’t get to talk to each other anymore).”

Carolyn Arguillas, editor of MindaNews, said she meant no offense to male journalists when she shared her observation that even in the coverage of the peace process and the clash in Mamasapano, Maguindanao that killed 44 Special Action Force troopers, 18 MILF members, and 3 civilians on January 25, 2015, it was the female journalists who were more able to provide stories about what was going on the communities, especially the lives of the families who had to evacuate from the area.

“It had been six or seven days since the male journalists were fielded in the clash site, but I was wondering why they hadn’t submitted any stories. When they submitted their stories, they were about the gunfight and the all-out military offensive,” she said.

While women journalists can be commended for providing the human side of conflict, she said it is saddening to note that it has become tiresome to hear that women always take charge of handling “stories with emotions.”

A journalist for more than 25 years, Arguillas said stories like these are often belittled, but it is not easy going over the process of getting the information and putting them in writing and reportage. For instance, she said, “Paano ka matatapos sa interview mo kung ikaw mismo iiyak din? (How will you be able to get your full interview when you also cry with your interviewee?)”

Rohaniza Sumndad Usman of the Young Moro Professionals and founder of the Teach Peace, Build Peace movement, said being identified as Muslim or as a person who professes Islam has many downsides, including not being granted a PLDT telephone line because “Muslims do not pay their bills.”

Usman’s organization educates children and young people on the proper images and mindsets about peace and respecting the diversity of people’s culture and way of life. Because of the disdain usually directed at Muslims, she told the media workshop that it is still “better to build peace generationally,” to start it with people who will inherit the world.

Usman and Tomawis questioned and put to task the media for failing to report the everyday situations of Moro women and children, and for not providing the youth role models or heroes they can emulate.

Ferrer and Lao said “a good portion of peace negotiations is fought in the media.” Both reiterated the need for the media to “look at the world through women’s eyes” and to “humanize the peace process.”

Lao in fact provided journalists the human side of the media workshop when she broke down upon sharing her vision of Moro children “who will no longer suffer the horror of war and conflict” and a generation who will inherit a world “where war is just a figment of the imagination.”

Diana G. Mendoza is a freelance journalist. She is a board member of the Women’s Feature Service Philippines.