Peace volunteer calls for police reform in Mindanao to ensure lasting peace

MANILA, Philippines — Coming from an eight-day volunteering mission in Mindanao, a former high ranking police official of Ireland advised implementers of the peace framework agreement to reform the police force first, among other steps, to create lasting peace.

Peter Sheridan, the former assistant chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the police’s highest ranking Catholic officer in a Protestant-dominated region is here in the country as part of a volunteer organization VSO Bahaginan’s Eminent Volunteering for its peace building program.

Speaking to reporters in a press briefing in Makati City, he said his goals in the brief visit included sharing with members of Mindanao communities the experience of Ireland in peace building after decades-old civil unrest.

Ireland’s civil war was ended through a peace pact, known as Belfast Agreement signed in 1998. But after that, Sheridan said a lot of policing work had to be done “to keep the peace to allow others to make the peace.”

He said the challenge for the Philippines now would be to create a police service free from partisan control.

“A police force should be well-represented and its members should come from various communities. It would be deficient if it would only come from one community,” Sheridan said.

Sheridan was a Catholic official in a police force once dominated by Protestants.

He said the police in Mindanao should also create less militaristic units with civilian functions.

“From our experience, reform in the police force was closely linked to the success of the peace agreement. We had to demilitarize. In a peaceful society, why would you need police officers acting like soldiers?” he said.

“Community policing is what we’ll need. We have to go back to the role of the police, to protect everyone’s human right and dignity,” he said.

Accompanying his volunteer counterpart, retired Gen. Charly Holganza, former head of the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ National Development Support Command, Sheridan went to Cotabato in Mindanao last week and talked to leaders of youth groups, Muslim and Christian communities.

“There was euphoria during the signing of the peace agreement. But its implementation would take a lot of work. You have to persevere,” Sheridan said.

Sheridan spent 32 years in the police service of Northern Ireland, most of which during the country’s civil strife from the 1960s to 1990s.

He is scheduled to fly back to his country on Wednesday to resume his work as Chief Executive Officer of the Co-operation Ireland, a leading peace-building charity working in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

VSO Bahaginan is yearly accepting expert volunteers from abroad to lend a hand in the country’s development programs.

Last year, a member of the Irish parliament, Deputy Dominic Hannigan, traveled to the country as a volunteer. His aim then was to connect to national and local groups and impart the Irish peace-making experience which might be useful to the Mindanao peace process.