ISABELA CITY , Basilan – Hundreds of peace-loving citizens of Basilan province are expected to participate on (Nov 24) launching program of the annual Mindanao Week of Peace (MWoP) 2011, highlighted by the civic parade involving multi-stakeholders.
In a series of meetings of key stakeholders for the 2011 celebration agreed to hold various activities at the duration of the week-long celebration and beyond. Aside from the launching program on the November 24, a peace conference, a tri-people youth peace forum and workshop, an inter-faith dialogue activity, poster-making contests, and a Rosary rally for peace and life will also be held.
The stakeholders who participated in these meetings agreed to organize themselves into the Basilan Alliance for Peace and Development as a movement to continue doing peace initiatives even after the MWoP observance.
A pre-MWop event kicked off Tuesday in Isabela City with the holding of the poster-making contest at the Querexeta Formation Center
Miriam L. Suacito, Executive Director of the Nagdilaab Foundation Inc, also acts as the Secretariat for the alliance said that the annual celebration is the venue for events highlighting the promotion of a culture of peace in Mindanao, a resource-rich island of the southern Philippines
The Mindanao Week of Peace is a celebration that involves communities of inter-faith organizations, non-governmental organizations, peoples’ organizations, government agencies who are working and advocating and mainstreaming the Culture of Peace in the Southern Philippines through various peace activities.
Initiated in Zamboanga in 1997 by Peace Advocates of Zamboanga (PAZ), this activity has become a Mindanao-wide event as adopted by the Bishops-Ulama Conference (BUC). Since then, it is being commemorated annually from the last Thursday of November to the first Wednesday of December, also perpetuated in observance through Presidential Proclamation No. 127, Series of 2001. For each year, a theme is developed by the BUC every month of May or June. This year’s theme is “Common word between us and you: Love of God, Love of neighbor.”
In a statement, the Bishop-Ulama Conference said that the theme is the title of the historic and significant Letter of 138 Muslim scholars of the world to Pope Benedict XVI and the religious leaders of the Christian Churches
The BUC said that Christian and Muslim beliefs are called People of the Book, contents of which are believed to have been revealed by God/Allah Himself. “Because of this divine revelation, they have a common origin and a common destiny which they can only be achieved through a life based on "Love of God and Love of Neighbor", a core commandment to know and to obey.”
It further said that the conflicts, wars and animosities among and between Christians and Muslims in the global society today can be traced to the wrong understanding and/or violation of this commandment. For this reason, “we urgently appeal to all Christians and Muslims in this country, in
