Sunday, September 15, 2013

Gallery of Peace Efforts: Southern Philippines 5

May 3 2008 saturation drive vs. Abu Sayyaf coinciding with a highly popular title boxing match in the U.S. In the photo below, government forces with civilian volunteers (many of them MNLF fighters) found the camp where ICRC staff Eugenio Vagni was allegedly held hostage by terrorist and criminal civilian captors.

Above, Police Col. Julasirim Kasim, Provincial Commander of Sulu Province PNP is giving final instructions and coordinating information to the raiding party. Four days following the saturation drive, Col. Kasim and several others died in the saturation drive at Maimbung, Sulu, the same site where countless officers and men of the government uniformed forces were also killed by Islamic secessionist and terrorist bands. Col. Kasim was about to celebrate his birthday and retirement from the police service. The good colonel missed his celebration.

On the other hand, a large number of Abu Sayyaf terrorists were killed during the operations at Maimbung, evidenced by the large number of firearms recovered and several days after, the substantial number of funerals reported by the villagers of Sulu Province.

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The Distraction brought by fighting Climate Change

After the 2005 Hyogo Conference, scientists urged the United Nations to consider that the various conflicting issues surrounding Climate Change is "distracting governments" from providing solutions to threats of disasters worldwide.

"The current UN focus on "fighting climate change," as illustrated in the Nov. 27 UN Development Programme's Human Development Report, is distracting governments from adapting to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever forms they may take. National and international planning for such changes is needed, with a focus on helping our most vulnerable citizens adapt to conditions that lie ahead. Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity's real and pressing problems."

A letter written to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon ventilated sentiments of scientists and technology experts on the issue of focusing deeper into finding means to adapt to the threat of climate change.

A network of connected hazards

The Global Geohazard System

Crisis Mapping

In 2008 we determined to create a full-function Crisis Mapping project. This was borne out of the persistent eruption of hostilities in Southern Philippines between both communist - Islamist groups on one side and. government on the other side. Fresh from the experience at confronting an incorrigible troublemaker such as the Juma'a Abu Sayyap, or more popularly known as Abu Sayyaf, we resolved to push stakeholders to join in formulating the Philippine conflicts crisis map.

This is modeled after the U.S.-Euro academe's successful crime and peace keeping mapping efforts that had led to wide acceptance and invited broad-based support from as many sectors and as many countries as possible.

After all, the value of life is such that people and institutions, states and combines will pay as high a price as possible for the safety of both individuals and enclaves of people.

Changed Parameters

One year later, the entire universe for the crisis mapping project had changed. It cannot be called a drastic change since the new directions fell within range of long-held advocacies and persistent efforts. We had began such efforts by provoking officials at the Department of National Defense to modernize.

Among the sources for concepts and ideas of our papers given to the department was an executive formerly engaged as part of a service provider group at a Saudi Arabia military base. The Saudi military and government, thanks to their foreign high-tech service providers in the late 80s were already advanced in the use of GIS, the digitization of all documents, exploiting satellite information among many things.

With various other inputs from visiting colleagues, the advocacy for a fully functional satellite research, GPS and GIS-ready system was pushed at defense department, the National Security Council and at the Department of Transportation and Communications through the suggestion of the administrative officer of the defense secretary. More > >

Environment Hazards. Crisis Mapping. Forecasting.

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Sunday, September 15, 2013

Gallery of Peace Efforts: Southern Philippines 5

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