Context of Our Ministry
The government is at war with the New People’s Army (NPA), the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Abu Sayyaf Group. These wars cause thousands upon thousands of displaced persons. Internal refugees, as they are called by non-governmental and people’s organizations, are forced to go into hiding or remain in evacuation centers which can hardly be called “home”.
More often than not, their human rights are severely violated. Two disaster relief organizations have reported that more than half of the incidents of forced evacuations are caused by the Armed Forces of the Philippines
From 1986-2006, a total of 3,143,892 individuals or some 563,476 families were displaced. The Gloria Macapagal Arroyo administration accounts for 41% of these dislocated persons.
The government, equating development with the mushrooming of infrastructure projects such as dams, roads, subdivisions, and recreational facilities for tourists have driven residents from their places of abode. The targeted communities, in courageous attempts to protect their houses and property, endeavour to resist these “development” projects. These are met with the deployment of troops to the areas. According to the disaster monitoring record of The Citizen’s Disaster Response Center (CDRC), 16,694 families or 91,342 individuals were affected by development aggression in 2006.In the wake of an alarming increase of internal displacements, the EMPD was formed as a concrete response of church people to the situation of dehumanization and the erosion of people’s dignity.
