COTABATO CITY— A bill was introduced in the second regular session and entered on first reading; it outlines the guiding principles for the Rehabilitation Action Plan and the Livelihood Restoration Plan.

To ensure that the assistance given to IDPs is consistent and effective, Parliament Bill No. 141 mandates that national and Bangsamoro government agencies expropriate and leverage on unused government-proclaimed resettlement areas, as well as assets and other public lands. These areas will be converted into primary growth centers.

The growth center will serve as the regional hub for IDP rehabilitation and resettlement projects and activities.

Issues of social integration, livelihood rehabilitation, and economic empowerment, with a focus on the needs and capacities of conflict-affected and economically displaced communities, will be given special consideration.

“Our government has the primary responsibility to ensure that IDPs’ basic rights to food, water, shelter, dignity, and safety are met in addition to facilitating their access to all other rights,” said MP Ali Sangki, the main author of the proposed bill.

He clarified that if conditions for long-term solutions are not created, conditions for security, property restoration, and resettlement of internally displaced people cannot be realized.

Data showed in his explanatory note that since 1969, there has been an ongoing conflict in Mindanao, which has resulted in significant infrastructure and housing destruction as well as massive displacement.

According to the Bangsamoro Organic Law, the Parliament shall pass a law creating a housing and human settlements agency to address the lack of shelters, settlements, and livelihoods for the disadvantaged and homeless, especially those victims of conflict and atrocities.

The proposed bill will encourage rural development by providing IDPs and communities afflicted by conflict with new land.

Once passed, a Resettlement and Rehabilitation Development Council, attached to the Ministry of Human Settlement, will be established to conduct a full status assessment of all resettlement areas enumerated in the bill and execute all possible legal remedies and procedures within its power and mandate to expropriate as far as it is necessary and repossess or reacquire all the subject settlement areas. (LTAIS-Public Information, Publication, and Media Relations Division)