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| WMSU, Other Mindanao State Universities, To Intensify Peace Education after Malaysian Summit |
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| Thursday, 21 January 2010 06:26 |
  THE Mindanao Association of State Colleges and Universities Foundation (MASCUF) of which Western Mindanao State University is a member signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) 6 to facilitate academic, research, and other non-academic collaborations and exchanges between USM and MASCUF’s member institutions. The signing was made during the visit by over 37 SUC presidents from Mindanao and officials of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) and Commission on Higher Education to USM from January 12 to 17. The visit consisted of a Conference dubbed as “Mindanao Educators Peace Summit” whose theme was “Transforming the Conflict in Mindanao Through Peace Education and Quality Higher Education.” It was jointly organized by the Research and Education for Peace of the USM (REPUSM), the Southeast Asia Conflict Network (SEACSN), the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and MASCUF WMSU President Dr. Grace J. Rebollos initiated the summit as a follow-up to last year’s COP (Consolidation for Peace) 3 Mindanao conference held in Penang in January last year. Peace Advocates Zamboanga president Fr. Angel Calvo was one of the resource persons of CoP3. “The summit hopes to ‘help harness educational leadership for peace and development in the Southern Philippines by providing a venue for conversation – analysis, visioning, and action - towards peace education. It also intends to provide an opportunity for learning from the performance of a leading Asian center of academic institutional excellence towards affordable quality higher education (as a contribution to peace) in Mindanao’”, an earlier news story said. Dr. Rebollos said the summit opened the eyes and sensitized the SUC heads to the urgent imperative for their institutions to undertake activities and projects in areas like peace education, advocacy, conflict transformation and the political resolution of the Bangsamoro war. On the last day of the visit, MASCUF also signed and issued the”Penang Declaration for Peace 2010”, at the Parkroyal Hotel in Battu Ferringhi, in Penang, where USM is located. The “seven-point declaration and four-point action agenda”, according to a Mindanews report, called for the following action by the SUCs: “ promote peace education; implement Executive Order 570 by institutionalizing peace education in SUCs in Mindanao; collaborate among SUCs in undertaking peace education programs in areas of instruction, research and community extension; recommend to the Commission on Higher Education the identification of regional peace consortia, together with other civil society groups, and to appropriate funds therefore; “Strengthen MASCUF as a Peace Network working together for a common agenda and sharing its resources; recommend to the Office of the President the (issuance of an executive order on the) observance of Muslim and Indigenous People’s (Lumads) holidays all throughout Mindanao.; and that MASCUF as a Peace Network should be involved in the national agenda for peace process.” “The sectors’ action agenda are as follows: strengthen the implementation of EO 127 promoting the Mindanao Week of Peace; promotion of cultural unity in diversity through solidarity activities and communication and education materials, not only in Mindanao, but throughout the country; increase networking and linkages with international and national partners for peace; and development of a Mindanao peace research and community extension agenda,” report further said. Peace Presidential Adviser Annabelle Abaya, Dr. Hja Luningning Umar, commissioner of the Philippines’ Commission on Higher Education, Tan Sri Prof. Dzullkifli Abdul Razak, vice-chancellor of the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Professors Rudy Rodil, Mindanao historian and peace advocate and Abhoud Syed Lingga of the Cotabato City-based Institute of Bangsamoro Studies; Masatoshi Takahashi, Senior Representative of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in Malaysia, Sachiko Ishikawa, Senior Advisor of the JICA Tokyo Office, Kazuhiko Shimizu, Deputy Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan were among the officials who participated in the unprecedented summit. At the Malaysian university, Associate Professor Dr. Kamarulzaman Askandar, Coordinator of REPUSM, spearheaded the summit. Dr. Rebollos said REPUSM is run mostly by volunteer students and faculty members. As a result of the Penang experience, MASCUF schools will form regional peace consortia among themselves and civil society groups, Dr. Rebollos said. In WMSU, she will also form a “peace corps” that will initiate peace education programs in the curricula, researches, and advocacies. |