kababaihan-at-kapayapaan-issue-3

Cecilia Jimenez, GPH Representative, Transitional Justice and Reconciliation CommissionThe return of the nativeBy JURGETTE HONCULADADESPITE THE ROCKY PATH,toward the passage of the BangsamoroBasic Law (BBL), the government ofthe Philippine Republic (GPH) andMoro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF)are ready, willing and able to pursuematters of justice and reconciliation.Eminently qualified by professionaltraining, work experience, andpersonal inclination is lawyerCecilia “Cej” Jimenez-Damary, whorepresents the Philippine governmentin the Transitional Justice andReconciliation Commission (TJRC).Formed in September 2014, the TJRC ispart of the annex on normalization inthe Comprehensive Agreement on theBangsamoro. The TJRC is chaired byMô Bleeker, Swiss special ambassadoron transitional justice. Thecommission’s MILF representative islawyer Ishak Mastura.Jimenez earned a foreign servicedegree from the University of thePhilippines but was later drawn to lawstudies for several reasons. First wasthe influence of a grandfather judgewho “used law to better the lives ofothers”. As a high school studentat Stella Maris College, ran by theFranciscan Missionaries of Mary, shewas struck by the nuns’ reports ontheir missions to Mindanao “tendingto the needs of marginalized peopleincluding Muslims…bearing witness tothe atrocities committed there.” Thiswas, after all, martial law, and thenuns’ periodic reports sharpened her“sense of justice”.Finally, as undergraduate at theUniversity of the Philippines, shewas exposed to protest action, visitedpicket lines, and spoke with torturevictims in detention. As PhilippineCollegian news editor, she becamefriends with news reporter, now GPH-MILF panel chair, Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, with whom she would sharean abiding passion for human rightsadvocacy.Human rights workJimenez completed a law degree atAteneo de Manila in 1988, passedthe bar in 1990 and worked with thePhilippine Alliance of Human RightsAdvocates (PAHRA) as deputy generalsecretary for international affairs andfor legal matters until 1993.People Power propelled Cory Aquinoto the presidency in the mid-80s butwhen government peace talks withthe CPP/NPA/NDF collapsed, themilitary adopted a “total war” policy.One consequence was intensivemilitary operations in targeted orsuspected rebel areas that causedmassive dislocation of populations.Jimenez recalls continuing “arbitraryarrests” and “warrantless arrests”that took her all over the islandsdoing legal work to protect victims ofhuman rights violations.Spanning 450,000 hectares innorthern Luzon, Marag Valleyhad been tagged as a hotbed ofrebellion from the 1970s throughthe 1990s. Marag Valley was subjectto military campaigns that droveentire communities from their homesand rice fields. Many sought refugein the deep forest. One area waslisted as having 200 casualties butthe combined tally for the dead andmissing is believed to be closer to 500.Representing PAHRA, in tandemwith the Ecumenical Movement forJustice and Peace (EMJP), Jimenez ledthree fact-finding missions to MaragValley in the ‘90s, her first exposureto the issue of internally displacedpersons or IDPs (then called internalrefugees). What she learned and theadvocacy work emanating from thisexperience would serve her later inthe international human rights arena.Jimenez was spokesperson for Asia-Pacific NGOs at the 1993 Conferenceon Human Rights in Vienna. Soonafter, she took a year off in Londonto pursue a masters of law degreein public international law, as aChevening scholar. After marriage in1995 to a Swiss agronomist active inPhilippine solidarity work she movedto Bulgaria, but Jimenez continuedher work as member of the AmnestyInternational (AI) Mandate Committeetasked to study “borderline cases”.One question posed to her was16 KABABAIHANatKAPAYAPAAN March 2015