Livelihood Enhancement and Peace

Local farmers show off newly harvest corn from the fields

Overview

In support of the 1996 Final Peace Agreement between the Government of the Philippines and the Moro National Liberation Front, the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Livelihood Enhancement and Peace program, as part of Growth With Equity in Mindanao, provided more than 28,000 former MNLF combatants with the means to begin sustainable, small-scale commercial agricultural production, thereby transforming them into productive farmers or fish/seaweed producers, and enabling them to begin earning sufficient funds to support themselves and their families. As a result of LEAP and other, similar programs, the MNLF, as a whole, has never again engaged government forces in any military or combat activity.

 

Publications

Read how community-based counterinsurgency efforts in the Philippines have reduced insurgent violence and reintegrated former combatants into peaceful coexistence.

PRISM, the security studies journal of the National Defense University Press, recently published Mindanao: A Community-Based Approach to Counterinsurgency, by William A. Stuebner, Director of Civil-Military Operations, and Richard Hirsch, Senior Vice President.