QUEZON CITY (MindaNews / 2 January) – As we step into 2026, I find myself thinking about peace, not as an abstract ideal, but as something tangible we might actually build together this year.
This article is about hope tempered with honesty. It addresses the fragile peace in Mindanao, where the Bangsamoro experiment faces interference from Manila and the Lumad continue to suffer injustice. It confronts our national challenges, from corruption to accountability for past atrocities, from the impeachment of a vice president to stalled peace talks with communist rebels.
And it looks beyond our shores to Gaza, Ukraine, Myanmar, and the climate crisis that threatens us all. These are not separate struggles but interconnected pieces of the same puzzle, the work of building a world where peace means more than the absence of war.
Mindanao: The Unfinished Work for Peace
For Mindanao, my hope is both urgent and specific. The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region represents one of our nation’s most significant experiments in peace, and it deserves our sustained attention and support. The transition hasn’t been easy, governance challenges persist, resources remain inadequate, and the promise of genuine autonomy still competes with the reality of deep-rooted distrust. My hope is that 2026 brings not just patience with this process, but active investment in making it work.
But troubling developments threaten this fragile peace.
In March 2025, President Marcos unilaterally replaced MILF Chairman Al Haj Murad Ebrahim as interim chief minister with Abdulraof Macacua, bypassing MILF recommendations and sparking accusations of Manila’s meddling in BARMM’s internal affairs.
This intervention, coupled with the repeated postponement of parliamentary elections now scheduled for no later than March 2026, has created internal tensions within the MILF and raised fundamental questions about whether BARMM’s autonomy depends more on Manila’s whims than on the consultative processes designed to end decades of conflict. The upcoming elections will be a critical test of whether the peace process can withstand such pressures or whether political manipulation will undermine what so many have sacrificed to build.
We cannot speak of peace in Mindanao without speaking of the Lumad. For indigenous communities, peace isn’t just about ending armed conflict, it’s about the right to exist on ancestral lands, to preserve their cultures, to educate their children in their own ways. The attacks on Lumad schools, the forced closures, and the militarization of their communities are wounds that contradict every promise of peace we make.
The Talaingod 13 case haunts me as we enter this new year. Former Bayan Muna representative Satur Ocampo, former ACT Teachers Party-list representative France Castro, Salugpongan executive director Meggie Nolasco, and ten others were convicted of human trafficking and child abuse for conducting a humanitarian mission to evacuate Lumad children and teachers from a militarized zone. They were bringing these children to safety, responding to pleas from communities under threat, and for this act of compassion they were convicted and sentenced.
My hope for 2026 is that this injustice is overturned, that these individuals are acquitted, and that we remember that protecting the vulnerable should never be treated as a crime.
I write this knowing that advocacy for indigenous rights and critique of military operations comes with risks. I myself have been red-tagged by Mr. Antonio Parlade, former military official and spokesperson of the NTF-ELCAC, simply for speaking out on these issues.
The accusation, that defending human rights somehow equals support for armed insurgency, is both absurd and dangerous. I’m grateful for the many colleagues, students (including AFP and PNP officials and prosecutors and Judges), friends, and fellow advocates who have stood by me and refused to let such tactics work.
The Philippines: Accountability and Justice
For the Philippines more broadly, we face tests that will define what kind of nation we want to be. The corruption crisis isn’t new, but it has reached levels that strain public faith in institutions. When billions disappear from programs meant for the poor, when government positions become family franchises, when accountability seems reserved only for those without power, we erode the very foundation democracy requires.
The ICC investigation into former President Duterte’s drug war forces us to confront uncomfortable truths about the thousands of lives lost. Whatever one believes about the necessity of that campaign, the families who lost fathers, sons, and brothers to extrajudicial killings deserve answers. My hope is that we find the courage to pursue accountability, not out of vindictiveness, but because a society that cannot account for its dead cannot truly claim to value life.
The impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sara Duterte demand our serious attention. The evidence of misused confidential funds, the threats made against public officials including the President, and the pattern of unaccountability represent fundamental violations of public trust and constitutional duty. My hope is that 2026 brings the moral courage to hold even the most powerful accountable, that impeachment leads to conviction, and that we demonstrate clearly that no family name places anyone above the law.
The peace process with the National Democratic Front remains perpetually stalled, repeatedly abandoned, yet never quite dying. Decades of armed conflict have cost us so much, lives, resources, possibilities. The November 2023 Oslo Joint Statement, signed with such hope between the Philippine government and the NDFP, promised a framework for substantive talks on social and economic reforms. Yet those promises remain unfulfilled, the agreements gathering dust while communities continue to bear the cost of unresolved conflict.
The World: From Conflict to Climate Justice
Gaza has become synonymous with humanitarian catastrophe, a place where children know the sound of airstrikes better than birdsong, where hospitals struggle to function, where the basic dignity of life has been reduced to rubble and grief. My hope for 2026 is for a ceasefire that holds, for blockades lifted, for reconstruction to begin. But more than that, I hope for the political will to address what everyone knows but few will say, that no sustainable peace is possible without addressing occupation, settlements, and the fundamental rights and security of both Palestinians and Israelis.
Ukraine enters another year of war, another year of cities shelled, of families separated, of sovereignty violated. The fatigue is real, in Ukraine, in allied nations, in all of us watching from afar. My hope is that 2026 brings a peace that Ukrainians themselves can accept, one that doesn’t reward aggression or normalize the redrawing of borders by force.
Myanmar’s crisis has fallen from headlines but not from reality. The military junta continues its brutal rule, pro-democracy activists languish in prisons, ethnic minorities face renewed violence, and a generation of young people has seen their futures stolen.
My hope is that the international community remembers Myanmar, that ASEAN, chaired by the Philippines in 2026, finds courage beyond its principle of non-interference, that the people’s resistance is met with meaningful support rather than empty statements.
Underlying all of this is climate change, the crisis that exacerbates every conflict and threatens every peace. Climate justice means the nations that contributed least to this emergency shouldn’t bear the greatest burden of its consequences. It means typhoons shouldn’t determine whether Filipino farmers can feed their families, Pacific island nations shouldn’t disappear beneath rising seas, and African communities shouldn’t face famine because of droughts they didn’t cause.
My hope for 2026 is that wealthy nations move beyond pledges to actual transfers of technology and resources, that fossil fuel interests stop blocking necessary transitions, that we treat this as the existential crisis it is.
The Work Ahead
Peace won’t arrive as a dramatic transformation on January 1st. It will come, if it comes at all, through ten thousand small choices, to demand accountability from the powerful, to honor indigenous rights as non-negotiable, to choose dialogue over domination, to recognize that genuine security comes from justice.
This year, my hope is that we make more of those choices, that BARMM receives the support it needs and the autonomy it was promised, that the Talaingod 13 are acquitted, that the Oslo commitments are honored, that ceasefires hold in Gaza and Ukraine, that Myanmar’s people see democracy restored, that climate justice becomes more than rhetoric. That all of us, in Mindanao, in the Philippines, in the world, inch, however slowly, toward the peace we all deserve.
Happy New Year to all people of good will! I extend that greeting even to those who disagree with me, including Mr. Parlade. I really believe that by working together we can make this hope for peace real.
[MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Dean Antonio Gabriel La Viña is Associate Director of Manila Observatory where he heads the Klima Center. He is also a professor of law, philosophy, politics and governance in several universities. He has been a human rights lawyer for 35 years and a member of the Free Legal Assistance Group. He is currently the managing partner of La Viña Zarate and Associates, a development and social change progressive law firm that provides legal assistance to the youth student sector, Lumad and other Indigenous Peoples, desaparecidos and their families, political detainees, communities affected by climate and environmental justice, etc. Dean Tony is a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and Chair of the Jurisprudence and Legal Philosophy Department of the Philippine Judicial Academy. He is founding president of the Movement Against Disinformation and the founding chairs of the Mindanao Climate Justice Resource Facility and the Mindanao Center for Scholarships, Sports, and Spirituality (MCS³).]
