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=National Unification Commission=

History
Following his ascension into office after the prior term of President Maria Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, President Fidel Valdez Ramos was faced with the task of handling several armed insurgencies and rebel groups. Recognizing that the general welfare of the Philippines depended upon an immediate decrease in political tumult and widespread national reunification, the president saw a use for immediate mechanisms of reconciliation and peace sponsorship. From an economic perspective, especially, it was well understood that the international community, and investors more particularly, would have difficulty placing their faith back into the Phillipines until the situation had been normalized. This, in turn, necessitated the creation of a government task force which was to be responsible for not only undertaking a peace building process, but also analyzing the situation at hand so as to decide what steps ought best be undertaken. To this end, Ramos issued Executive Order No. 19, on September 1st, 1992. Under said initiative, a group soon to be known as the National Unification Committee was formed to continue the work of the Peace Commission of Aquino’s government and provided with the following three mandates: “1. To formulate and recommend, after consulting with concerned sectors of society, to the President, a viable general amnesty programme, and peace process that will lead to a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the country; 2. To review and evaluate the existing National Reconciliation and Development Programme … with the view to integrating the programme into the general amnesty and peace process; 3. To call upon any ofﬁcial, agent, employee, agency or instrumentality of the national or local government for any assistance that may be necessary to carry out the purpose of Executive Order No. 19.” In order to accomplish this task, the organization was awarded an initial budget of roughly 12 million pesos, which equated to about 600,000 US dollars at the time, and ordered to complete its recommendations by the end of 90 days. Ultimately, though, both the NUC’s budget and its timeframe had to be expanded so as to better accommodate difficult political realities on the ground. Part of what provided the government, and by extension the NUC, a certain degree of diplomatic credibility towards the beginning of its undertaking of said peace process, however, was that the very first law passed during the Ramos administration more or less legalized prior communist affiliation in the Philippines. Said legislation, now demarcated as Republic Act 7636, also went so far as to repeal a 35-year old antisubversion law which had been practiced under President Marcos. Said amnesties, alongside the prisoner releases and amnesties, having been intentionally targeted in part towards increasing the chances that participation in the NUC hearings could develop into more lasting and genuine peace accords. “In December, 65 detained communist leaders and 68 rebel soldiers were released, raising to 417 the total number of political dissidents released since President Ramos launched his peace initiative in August.” This was then complemented with a twin amnesty program for state officials who had undertaken acts as part of counter-insurgency operations, and a process of honorable reconciliation through programmatic change and compromise to be overseen by the NUC.

Structure and Procedure
The commission was itself headed by former Elections Commissioner Haydee Yorac, a law professor at the University of the Philippines. The chair presided over eight members, of varying religious and political affiliation, and possessing social ties to many of the major factions at play. Supporting said group was a Council of Advisors, to cover some of the perspectives that might have been missed, as well as an administrative Secretariat and a Technical Committee to handle the details of implementation. In order to conduct the initial peacemaking survey and dialogue efforts nationally, and with relatively little direct manpower to spare, the NUC drafted up a three-tiered discussion system that could be applied with minimal overt supervision. With a bottom-up franchising approach to the process, meetings would be conducted at the provincial, regional, and national levels, with the former being led primarily via civil society, but with an official Manual of Operations for the Conduct of NUC Public Consultations to standardize the basic format. As the NUC did not have sufficient capacity on its own to promote the setup or distribution of this plan, their Secretariat was aided in organization by an Advisory Group with representatives of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP), the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), the department of local governments and the National Coordinating Council for Local Governance. "The NUC Secretariat and the Advisory Group appointed two members nominated by the NCCP and the CBCP to each Regional Convenors’ Group (RCG) and monitored the conduct of the provincial consultations. The Provincial Convenor Groups were required to have a minimum of four members, including the governor and representatives from an NGO and a people’s organization as well as a religious leader." However, the provinces themselves effectively decided their own number of constituents as regarded maximum membership. Similarly, they steered their own discussion, and then decided how this would be reported and represented at the regional level. On this note, roughly twelve main issues tended to be emphasized towards the beginning by the NUC as prospectively most relevant to peacemaking: "electoral reforms; human rights; political parties; dismantling of private armies; administration of justice; protection of the environment; socio-economic reforms; autonomy and cultural integrity; provisions for victims of armed conflicts; economic components of national unification; disposition of forces and armaments; and amnesty. They then asked participants to identify additional topics that should be included in the peace programme.” Meanwhile, roughly 24 sectors had representatives actively encouraged to participate, alongside the requisite representatives of the judiciary, armed forces and government itself, including “women’s organizations, child advocates, civic groups, cooperatives, the differently-abled, teachers and researchers, professional associations, farmers, fishermen, indigenous cultural communities, urban poor, media, labour, business, religious groups, social-development NGOs, cause-oriented and political organizations, issuespecific groups and groups of former rebels” among others. As with the issues up for discussion, the conferences were free to add groups at will, and such decisions ultimately shaped the path of the decision making process.

After discussion, local consultation groups selected their representatives for disclosure to provincial groups, and so on down the line. So as to be properly inclusive, local combatants were granted tokens of safe passage for the purpose of attending local peace talks. This strategy having being credited with effecting a relatively high level of societal reintegration within members of military rebel groups especially. This in turn led to a grassroots process wherein “the NUC worked together with local actors so that the consultations at the local and regional levels were led by civil society, both practically and symbolically, rather than the government.” To the point, in fact, where weak local government participation was occasionally blamed on an inadequate level of direct government attachment to the finished product.

So as to avoid confusion or a disruption of the peace process, the NUC would frequently use what pull it had via the President to strongly make clear to would-be actors that only they possessed the legal authority to engage in exploratory peace talks, and clearly delineating the proper authorized cooperative roles of other government agencies. As part of this process, they made a point of regularly exposing themselves to the press, though the specific details of ongoing negotiations tended to be kept respectfully confidential.

Findings
Eventually, the NUC condensed and interpreted this data amidst a flurry of ongoing preliminary discussions and peace summits amongst the various factions. The National Unification Commission Report to President Fidel V. Ramos was in turn expected to synergize and summarize more than a year's worth of work and transform said findings into actionable plans for his administration to pursue. While the specific contents of their recommendations were wide ranging and varied, the report they delivered to President Ramos was perhaps best known for its six-part institution of programmatic change, known as the Six Paths to Peace, after concluding that amnesties and peace talks alone would ultimately fail in the promotion of lasting peace and societal reunification. As such their report advised the following programmatic necessities be undetaken: “1. The pursuit of social, economic and political reforms that address the root causes of the armed conﬂicts; 2. Building consensus and empowerment for peace; 3. Pursuit of a peaceful, negotiated settlement with the different armed rebel groups; 4. Establishment of programmes for honourable reconciliation and integration of Rebel groups into the mainstream society; 5. Addressing concerns that arise out of the continuing armed hostilities; and 6. Nurturing a positive climate for peace.” These six steps were meant to be pursued in concert, executed simultaneously so as to maximize coverage and prevent key avenues of violent fallout. Somewhat famously, the report also included concerns on culture, the treatment of women, and the environment alongside multiple economic and political dimensions. However, some of its strongest influences, thanks to the perceived need for compromises with the CCP and MNLF respectively, involved issues of "poverty, inequity, poor governance, corruption, injustice, and the exploitation and marginalization of indigenous cultural communities" as root problems. Similarly, it identified a series of immediate actions which could be undertaken by the government in order to push towards peace and mitigate these divides. This advice was essentially acted upon via Executive Order No. 125 in the September of 1993, though Ramos also claimed future efforts might not be limited to the findings of the committee, but rather go beyond them.

Subsequent Impact
Some of the armed groups refused to participate, feeling as though compromise now would either undermine support for their armed movements or wind up shutting them out from some of their more politically radical policy goals. Similarly, others seem to have been mistrustful of the process, and whether or not Ramos would actually be willing to compromise or make what they deemed critical concessions. Even among those who did participate, many regarded the talks initially with a great deal of skepticism. Similarly, early on in the Ramos administration, members of the MNLF claimed dissatisfaction with the interpreted results of the Tripoli Agreement or on the grounds that the NUC did not seem poised to give them the level of autonomy they claimed to have been implied. Meanwhile, negotiations with the NDF (National Democratic Front of the Philippines) and CPP (Communist Party of the Philippines) oftentimes found these two actors attempting to push for a conference outside the Phillipines as an act of defiance, or alternatively. Such issues were not entirely resolved prior to the commission’s dissolution and replacement by OPAPP (The Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process) on July 31st, after submitting its report.

Nevertheless, much of what the NUC accomplished, and especially the six point plan, was later “incorporated into Ramos’ Comprehensive Peace Policy, carried forward by other administrations.” During the NUC's tenure, the Ramos administration hosted two rounds of major exploratory talks with MNLF in Tripoli and Cipanas, with the former producing a critical agreement, in addition to various others hosted directly through the NUC's exploratory measures. Such talks would later pave the way to the 1993 Interim Ceasefire Agreement, the formation of multilateral transitional working groups across martial lines, an agreement on education in 1994, and eventually national normalization. Apart from orchestrating what was at the time deemed to be a significant first step along the path to national peace, the NUC was able to at least partially push through many of its policy recommendations to President Ramos, carving a lasting policy legacy within the Philippines. It has even been studied as an example of pro-feminist peace negotiations, on account of its leadership and moreso its focus on womens’ rights and issues as part of the peace process.