Almost eight months after the siege in Zamboanga City, government is still prohibiting thousands of minority group members and other residen...
This arbitrary relocation violates Philippine law and international human rights standards, and amounts to forced eviction from their original homes, the international group pointed out.
The Zamboanga City government has already transferred hundreds of these displaced residents who were camped in a coastal evacuation center the past seven months to an elementary school several kilometers away. In June, when classes start, the city plans to move them again to government-built shelters that will serve as “transitional sites.”
The displaced residents have not been consulted regarding the transfers or their final resettlement site, HRW noted.
“The plight of Zamboanga’s displaced reflects an unacceptable failure by the Philippine government to ensure the safety and welfare of thousands of people forced to flee the September fighting,” said Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
“Rather than addressing return and resettlement in accordance with international law, the government is pushing forward a relocation process that is disregarding their basic rights,” Kine added.
In the Cawa-cawa evacuation camp, most of the displaced residents belong to the Badjao tribe who derive their livelihood from the sea.
Residents, local civil society leaders, and humanitarian workers told Human Rights Watch that the city government did not engage in genuine consultations with the displaced residents on its plans to relocate them. Instead, according to leaders of the displaced and aid agency representatives, city government officials met with a few of the affected residents only to inform them that the city had already decided to relocate them.
“The involvement of IDPs (internally displaced persons) has been limited,” one humanitarian official told Human Rights Watch.
UN body concerned about relocation impact
A report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees dated 22 April 2014 raised concerns about the relocation’s impact on the rights of the displaced residents. While the agency supported the move to vacate Cawa-cawa because of the dangers the location posed to the displaced, it said the affected residents “did not understand or have enough information about the move prior to the relocation.”
Human Rights Watch spoke to displaced people who disputed media reports that the government had consulted them and gained their consent for such transfers. Instead, media reports indicate that some displaced people are “consenting” to the transfer due to vague threats from Philippines security forces that those who resist “will be dealt with accordingly.” Soldiers as well as police have been involved in carrying out the transfers.
On 9 September 2013, armed insurgents from a faction of the rebel Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) took over five villages in Zamboanga City, taking dozens of residents hostage. Fighting in Zamboanga over the next four weeks displaced more than 100,000 people, most of them in the Muslim minority. The conflict resulted in dozens of deaths and the destruction of more than 10,000 homes. The majority of people displaced by the fighting remain in limbo. They include people staying in evacuation camps at a coastal area called Cawa-cawa and at the Joaquin Enriquez Sports Complex, which together hold more than 24,000 displaced people.
Government policies and practices are contributing to the poor health, well-being, and economic insecurity of the estimated 64,000 displaced people, particularly women and children, now living in seven evacuation camps, five “transitional sites” or shelters, and with relatives and friends. More than 100 people – mostly children and infants – have died from mostly preventable, sanitation-related illnesses since their displacement in September, according to government health officials.
Policies pursued by the Zamboanga City government, as well as provincial and central government agencies in Zamboanga, indicate a serious disregard for constitutional protections and international standards on internally displaced persons, Human Rights Watch said. Article 13, section 10 of the Philippine Constitution prohibits resettlement without “adequate consultation.” The UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement also call upon governments to provide protection for displaced persons, among others, by ensuring that “the free and informed consent of those to be displaced shall be sought.”
‘Forced evictions’ of Badjaos
In particular, the Zamboanga City government has prohibited displaced residents from the city’s Rio Hondo and Mariki villages, where most of the displaced in Cawa-cawa had lived, from returning to rebuild their homes. The city has instead declared the area of the two villages a “no-build zone” as a means to, according to officials, protect the areas’ mangrove forests. The city justifies this decision by citing the National Integrated Protected Areas System Act, which prohibits settlement in areas that have “unique physical and biological significance” that should be “protected against destructive human exploitation.”
However, this decision will effectively permanently displace thousands of ethnic Badjao, a tribe of traditional fishermen who have lived in the two villages since fleeing ethnic conflict in nearby Sulu province in the 1960s. The UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement provide that “states are under a particular obligation to protect against the displacement of indigenous peoples, minorities, peasants, pastoralists, and other groups with a special dependency on and attachment to their lands.”
While the Zamboanga City government has prohibited the original residents from resettling in the Rio Hondo and Mariki villages, the city’s three billion peso ($67 million) Zamboanga City Roadmap to Recovery and Reconstruction plan, or Z3R, specifically designates the area that includes Rio Hondo, Mariki, and three other affected villages for the construction of buildings and infrastructures, including “houses on stilts” and a base for the Philippine Navy, among others. That exception to the “no build zone” suggests that the government may eventually allow residential development in those areas.
“Forbidding evacuees from returning to their areas of residence by declaring them ‘no build zones’ is effectively a forced eviction that re-victimizes an already vulnerable population,” Kine said. “The government owes Zamboanga’s displaced residents a clear and open process in which they can meaningfully participate in their return or resettlement.”
