Peace “doesn’t happen overnight, but if there’s a will, then eventually it will.” said Rt Hon Paul Murphy, UK Parliamentarian and former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (NI) and Wales.
The British lawmaker visited Davao and Manila this week to share 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.
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 stressed that talks needed 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. That is the intensity of those talks. It was not part-time, it was a hothouse atmosphere - intensive, serious and stressful,” Murphy recalled.
It is important for everyone in the country to become invested in the peace process, Murphy said. He recalled that 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 admitted that the single biggest challenge in the Northern Island 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.”
“Perseverance is key. The world is littered with examples of peace processes which have failed, because they thought they could do it quickly,” said Murphy. “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.”
Drawing from similarities between the Northern Ireland and Mindanao conflicts where there are differences in culture and religious identities, parity of esteem – treating everyone as equal - was a key ingredient to the success of the peace process, explained Murphy. “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,” Murphy explained.
“The international dimensions are very important as well, thus, it may be important here too,” said Murphy. 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 de-commissioning of the arms held by paramilitary groups also involved international dimensions as they had tapped a Canadian general to oversee the independent commission to de-commission the 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 can’t be imposed. It involves compromise without giving up 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 are affected themselves,” Murphy concluded.
During his stay in Davao (3 October) and Manila (4-7 October) Paul Murphy spoke with members of the peace panels of the Philippine Government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF); the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) and other key government offices; the Senate and the House of Representatives; The Armed Forces; the Philippine National Police; civil society groups and business leaders in Mindanao.
Dubbed the “talks minister” during negotiations, Murphy spent two years chairing some of the talks which led to the ground-breaking Belfast/Good Friday agreement in 1998, the framework for peace in Northern Ireland.
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