Land Conflict in Mindanao

Below is an excerpt from a paper co-written by Myla Leguro, my supervisor and peace & reconciliation team senior manager, and me.  Hopefully this provides some background on land conflict in Mindanao for those who are particularly interested.  See my earlier post on peacebuilding work, for a short description of how CRS is addressing land conflict in Mindanao through the program that I work with.

Land Conflicts: Cause and Trigger of Tensions and Violence

Conflict in Mindanao is multi-layered, with causal factors including poverty, poor governance, culture, and competition for power, land, and resources.[1] Often, it has been characterized in terms of the ideological and historical narratives of pitting Christians and native Muslim inhabitants against each other. However, colliding interests over land and resources are more often at the root of many of the conflicts in Mindanao (Schiavo-Campo and Judd, 2005). Among the three main identity groups in Mindanao – Muslim, Christian, and Indigenous – competing claims over land continue to lead to political turmoil and violence both writ large and writ small. The situation has historical origins wherein over time various land policies inequitably allocated property rights to settlers and commercial interests, with inadequate protection for the rights of indigenous people and weak legal mechanisms to resolve disputes as they arose. Furthermore, conflict has worsened social relations between the identity groups during the last four decades, reducing the frequency of interactions among Muslims, Indigenous Peoples (IPs), and Christians (Judd, 2003).

 
Land and settlement policies during the colonial administration of the United States (U.S.) started the process of change in the demographic make-up of Mindanao. In 1903, the Moro[2] population was 76% of the total inhabitants in Mindanao; in 1939, the Moro population had decreased to 34% of the total population in Mindanao due to the resettlement program established by the colonial rulers (LaRousse, 2001, p.96). After they regained independence, the Philippine government adopted the resettlement program started by the U.S. to address agrarian unrest in other areas of the Philippines – Luzon and Visayas.[3]

 
The influx of Christian settlers, big corporations, and logging companies dispossessed Muslim and indigenous populations of the most fertile and resource-rich areas in Mindanao and signaled the heightening of tensions between Muslims and Christians. Moreover, with the introduction of Western models of land ownership with formal legal titles—a concept previously foreign to Moros and IPs—Moro and IP populations were gradually dispossessed of lands. In their communities, land was traditionally inherited and held by communities, but managed under the leadership of chieftains, or datus. Exacerbating the dispossession, some datus learned the private property system quickly and titled their own lands and those of their clansmen, with large landholdings establishing the legal basis for much of Moro landlordism today (Judd, 2003). Although most Christian settlers recognize their origins outside of Mindanao, many correctly maintain that they acquired their lands legitimately, through homesteading or agrarian reform. However, there have also been instances of “land grabbing,” particularly at the expense of IP populations, resulting in IP displacement and further marginalization.

 
Contradictory property laws, inconsistent legal interpretations, poor documentation of land titles, and legal pluralism[4] have added to the confusion and made legal cases on land extremely difficult to resolve. The following are examples of various policies that have either been at odds with local and/or traditional practices of communities (Muslim, IP) or contradicted each other:

• Regalian Doctrine: Dating to the earlier colonial era under Spain, it denotes that all lands of public domain belong to the State and was cited as a basis for the 1995 Mining Act.
• Land Registration Act of 1902: A western system of land titling by which the U.S. colonial government voided all land grants made by Moro and IP traditional leaders and paved the way for homesteading by settlers from outside Mindanao.
• Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (1988): Instituted comprehensive agrarian reform for the donation or appropriation of large landholdings to be distributed to lessees, share tenants, farm workers, etc.
• Mining Act (1995): All mineral resources in public and private lands within the Philippines are owned by the government. Critics charge that this law has eased the eviction of IP groups from their land by mining companies.
• Indigenous People’s Rights Act (1997): Allows for claims of ancestral domain for IP groups if they have occupied lands for 30 years or more except when interrupted by war, forced displacement, or dealings entered into by government and private individuals/corporations.

The unequal access to and protection of property rights (land access, use, and ownership) has also been aggravated by the multiplicity of government agencies charged with land tenure administration. Different agency regulatory systems [5] have created conflicting and overlapping land tenure frameworks resulting in numerous land-related disputes. Conflicts related to land ownership have become widespread, especially in communities in which different identity groups exist and conflicting government laws and tenurial instruments overlap (AFRIM, 2012).

 
Land conflicts in Mindanao should not, however, only be understood in relation to the dynamics between major identity groups. Different forms of land conflicts involve individuals, families, clans, groups and communities, and even private companies. Land conflicts in Mindanao can also be understood in relation to socio-economic power imbalances between conflicting parties, with conflicts occurring in both symmetrical and asymmetrical contexts. Land conflicts include competing or overlapping land claims, boundary disputes, encroachment in ancestral lands, questionable sales, mortgaging, forced eviction, and land grabbing.[6] Given these realities, competing claims for land at different levels now act as triggers for conflict with potential for wider escalation.

 

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1 Many of the root causes of internal conflict in the Philippines identified by the National Unification Commission in 1993 remain pertinent in Mindanao today, including: poor governance; poverty and economic inequity; abuse of power, human rights violations, and corruption; structural inequities in the political system including control by elite dynasties with access to private armies; and exploitation and marginalization of indigenous cultural communities.

2 The term Moro is often used to connote the 13 Islamized groups in Mindanao. It was derived from the Spanish term for the Muslim Moors of the Almavorid empire, who originated from North Africa and who conquered the Iberian kingdoms during the Middle Ages.

3 LaRousse (2001, p.93) noted that “before 1939 most of the settlements were located outside of Muslim areas…beginning 1948, the migration pattern shifted to areas of both Muslims and lumads (indigenous).”

4 Legal pluralism refers to the coexistence of multiple legal systems, for example, both customary and national laws. See Prill-Brett (1994) for definitions and discussion on legal pluralism and land rights in the Philippines.

5 There are three major government agencies that issue land tenure instruments, the Department of Agrarian Reform, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and National Commission on Indigenous Peoples

6 The A3B project baseline process identified 25 different types of land conflict across the 20 target barangays.