Pablo Gracia, an intern with GISF, reflects on his time supporting Nonviolent Peaceforce in the lead up to recent elections Mindanao, the Philippines.
Hi, I’m Pablo, an intern at the Global Interagency Security Forum. I’m currently studying for a master’s in Peace and Conflict Studies at Uppsala University, and have previously worked in several security roles with humanitarian organisations in Colombia. I recently travelled to Mindanao, in the Philippines, through the Rotary Peace Fellowship for a field placement with Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP) in Cotabato City. The experience gave me the opportunity to see first-hand how conflict prevention and civilian protection work in practice. In this blog I share some of my reflections on my time there.
NP is a global civil society organisation focused on protecting civilians through unarmed strategies – mainly through what they call Unarmed Civilian Protection (UCP). Since 2007, NP has supported the peace process in Mindanao as part of the International Monitoring Team established between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The decades-long Moro conflict ultimately led to the creation of Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) in 2019. Last week (14 September), elections were held in Bangsamoro, marking the region’s first parliamentary election. This is an important step in the region’s transition to autonomous government.
Early Warning and Early Response
NP approaches conflict prevention by implementing Early Warning and Early Response (EWER) mechanisms. Local volunteers are trained to monitor conflict indicators in a conflict-sensitive and non-partisan way. EWER is based on the recognition that the people living closest to conflict are often best placed to spot changes early, and to know what might help prevent tensions from escalating.
“EWER is based on the recognition that the people living closest to conflict are often best placed to spot changes early, and to know what might help prevent tensions from escalating.”
But the aim isn’t simply to collect information for an outside organisation. EWER is about building community ownership and strengthening communities’ own capacity to prevent or contain violence, drawing on local relationships, knowledge, and existing mechanisms.
NP helps connect information from the community to relevant stakeholders and response mechanisms when needed, while supporting local partners to strengthen their own ability to respond. For the BARMM elections, this means tracking emerging conflict and violence risks, sharing early warnings, and supporting locally led, nonviolent responses that help keep people safe and tensions from escalating.
Monitoring elections from within the community
These elections are shaping BARMM’s first democratically elected autonomous government – the product of years of negotiation and decades of conflict. In BARMM, elections can be a flashpoint, with political rivalries, clan tensions, and armed groups creating a volatile mix. That makes early warning and early action particularly important.
During my placement, local monitors highlighted familiar warning signs – violent incidents, armed group activity, military or police buildups, threats, clashes, and clan disputes (traditionally called ‘rido’) – alongside newer challenges like disinformation, rumours, and AI-generated content.
In fast-moving situations, good information often comes down to one thing: having trusted local contacts who can help you work out what’s actually happening. But this creates a particular challenge for community-based monitors: being embedded in the community can be their biggest strength and their biggest risk. Their local relationships and credibility give them access but also expose them to the same conflict dynamics they’re monitoring.
Perception matters. Who a monitor talks to, existing relationships, or perceived ties to one side can quickly be interpreted as taking sides. Neutrality isn’t something you simply declare – it has to be built and maintained through consistent behaviour and relationships.
“Neutrality isn’t something you simply declare – it has to be built and maintained through consistent behaviour and relationships.”
That makes communication, training, and mentoring critical: helping monitors use the right language, communicate non-violently, and recognise when it’s time to step back. Clear protocols for collecting, sharing, and acting on information also reduce the need to improvise in tense situations. There are practical risks too. Long journeys across difficult terrain can be physically and mentally draining, affecting situational awareness.
The key takeaway for me? Neutrality helps, but it isn’t a shield. Safety is built over time through trust, consistency, training, and relationships, often rooted in the very communities that make the monitoring possible.
A changing environment
What struck me during my time in BARMM was how fluid a post-conflict environment can be. Power, alliances, and patterns of violence keep shifting, making it difficult to predict behaviour or assess risk with confidence. These processes do not necessarily follow linear trajectories.
I saw this in a small open-source exercise mapping actors behind violent incidents over the past five years. A surprising number couldn’t be clearly identified from available sources – a reminder of how difficult it can be to build a complete picture or make reliable security judgements. BARMM isn’t simply a post-conflict area where the fighting has stopped. It’s a region still working through a complicated transition from armed conflict to autonomous government. Former armed movements have become political actors, disarmament and reintegration remain part of the process, and clan rivalries, local power structures, and other armed groups continue to shape security dynamics.
This reminded me of Colombia after 2016, when the demobilisation of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) didn’t simply mean that territorial control settled. New groups emerged, others repositioned, and the security picture continues to evolve to this day.
For humanitarian security practitioners, it is therefore important to understand not just who holds influence in a given area, but how communities navigate those relationships, what drives them, and how power and control are established, maintained, and contested.
What I’m taking away
The biggest lesson probably isn’t a surprising one for anyone working in humanitarian security: go and find out what local people actually think.
“The biggest lesson probably isn’t a surprising one for anyone working in humanitarian security: go and find out what local people actually think.”
Local knowledge isn’t just extra information. It can fundamentally change how you assess risk. Without it, decisions that look reasonable on paper can be completely out of step with the relationships, perceptions, and power dynamics shaping safety and access on the ground. My time with NP made that lesson very real: a good risk assessment starts with understanding the people and relationships behind the risk.
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