MEDIA RELEASE
Released By:
Downer
Australia has decided to give $2 million to help improve basic living conditions for former Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) combatants and their families in the Southern Philippines island of Mindanao.
This announcement coincides with my visit to a base camp of former MNLF combatants. Australia's existing development cooperation program in the Philipines is focused on the south, particularly Mindanao.
The area covered by the Special Zone for Peace And Development is receiving $23 million in Australian assistance for on-going funding of health, education, development planning and agriculture projects.
This latest $2 million will be provided through AusAID (Australia's development assistance agency), to the United Nations MNLF Emergency Assistance Programme, which is coordinating a $US13 million aid package to post-conflict areas in Mindanao.
International donors, including Australia, are supporting the continuing peace process by helping provide new economic opportunities - particularly agriculture-based livelihood programmes - to former MNLF combatants and their families.
Our contribution will also assist to fund basic household amenities such as water supply systems and toilets, along with other basic infrastructure such as school buildings and community health centres.
An estimated 6,400 former MNLF combatants and their dependants - totalling about 45,000 people - are expected to directly benefit from this emergency assistance.
Australia is providing this funding to demonstrate our commitment to supporting the peace-building process, following the September 1996 signing of a peace accord between the Government of the Philippines and the MNLF which followed more than two decades of armed conflict in Mindanao.
MANILA
Media contacts:
Judi Nixon (Mrs Sullivan's office) 07 5591 1011/0411 287 258
Deborah Nesbitt (AusAID,Canberra) 02 6206 4966/0417 683 767