Lupah Sug

With the recent Supreme Court ruling, my mind goes to the island of Sulu, where I’ve been privileged enough to have spent time on and off for the last few. One recent reason for it was this review of more than a decade’s worth of community-led conflict mediation and security coordination in Sulu, Philippines, which I wrote at the tail end of the lockdowns but finally saw the light of day last year. Lots of lessons to be learned from how HD and local partners Tumikang Sama-Sama have used traditional and customary mediation (in Sinug, pagpati’ut or pagsulut) in ways that support formal justice and public order and safety institutions, while combining both local and global expertise. Not many peacemaking and peacebuilding initiatives have been able to do this in such a grounded and sustained manner—and very few institutions have the leeway to do long-term and localised evaluations beyond the signing of peace deals. Summary report downloadable here: https://hdcentre.org/insights/review-of-long-term-conflict-mediation-and-multi-stakeholder-security-coordination-in-sulu-philippines/