‘Don’t be discouraged by long peace talks with MILF’

MANILA, Philippines—Peace “doesn’t happen overnight, but if there’s a will, then eventually it will.”

This was stressed by visiting British parliamentarian Paul Murphy during his meetings last week in Mindanao with members of the government peace panel and their counterparts in the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

During his visit, Murphy, also a former United Kingdom secretary of state for Northern Ireland and Wales met with military and police officials, as well as leaders of civil society and business groups in Manila and the southern Philippines.

In Davao City, Murphy shared “some of the lessons he learned at the negotiating table in Northern Ireland to provide insights that may help move the Mindanao peace talks forward,” said the British Embassy in Taguig City.

The embassy quoted Murphy as having said “the Northern Ireland peace process took many years, but those involved finally discovered a winning formula to achieve peace on the basis of trust, perseverance, intensity, parity of esteem and international dimensions.”

Murphy emphasized that peace talks “need to be intensive and full-time to attain success.”

“There’s no substitute for proper dialogue between those people involved. You can’t negotiate peace part-time. During negotiations, 200-300 people at a time were working in the talks building, and they worked every day, every week, every month, every year until an agreement was made,” he said.

Murphy recalled “that’s the intensity of those talks. It was not part-time. It was a hothouse atmosphere—intensive, serious and stressful.”

According to Murphy, “it is important for everyone in the country to become invested in the peace process.”

He said “Britons who were not part of Northern Ireland showed little concern about the 30 years of infighting in Northern Ireland until the bombs started going off in the mainland.”

Murphy pointed out that “the single biggest challenge in the Northern Ireland peace process was establishing trust between the two sides.”

“Trust was the basis of the agreement. It took years for the trust and confidence to be built up between both sides,” he said.

At the same time, Murphy stressed “perseverance is the key. The word is littered with examples of peace processes, which have failed because they thought they could do it quickly.”

“It took five years for the Northern Ireland talks to come to an agreement and another decade for the agreement to be implemented. It’s better to talk for 15 years than to fight for 15 years,” he said.

Drawing from similarities between the Northern Ireland and Mindanao conflicts— cultural and religious identity differences being among them—Murphy said “treating everyone as equal is a key ingredient to the success of the peace process.”

“It means a proper respect and recognition of other people who do not necessarily believe the same things you believe in, that they have a right to believe in what they do,” he said.

Murphy noted that “the international dimensions are very important, as well. Thus, it may be important here, too.”

He explained “the Northern Ireland peace process involved independent chairs from the US, Canada and Finland, agreed by all the sides to oversee the talks. The solution to the decommissioning of the arms held by paramilitary groups also involved international dimensions as they had tapped a Canadian general to oversee the decommissioning of weapons. It was a difficult obstacle to overcome and it took a decade to implement in Northern Ireland, but it worked.”

“Ultimately, every peace process has to be home grown. It doesn’t work unless the people involved do it themselves. It involves compromise without giving up the basic principles. It’s hard but it can be achievable. At the end of the day, the people who have to make the agreement are the people who are affected themselves,” Murphy added.