Families remember missing loved ones 4 years after the Marawi siege

In Marawi City, Lanao del Sur, dozens of families are still unaware of the fate of loved ones who disappeared in the five-month siege that started on 23 May 2017.

“Life goes on. Four years have passed and it’s still hard to accept,” said 26-year-old Joel, whose father, a construction worker, remains missing.

“I thank him for raising us well. For instilling in us not to break the law. I just miss him so much because he was my guide [in life],” he shared, visibly emotional.

Beyond the psychological pain of not knowing what happened to their loved ones, the families of those still missing have economic, legal, and psychosocial needs.

Many have lost their breadwinners and face legal and administrative gaps that limit their access to social benefits and pensions.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has been supporting families of missing persons since the siege, conducted an assessment in 2019 to evaluate these needs following the disappearances.

It showed that families’ top priority was to clarify the fate and whereabouts of their loved ones, followed by financial aid, and addressing the psychosocial challenges they face in dealing with the absence.

Based on this assessment, the ICRC designed an accompaniment program that began in June 2020 to help meet these families’ needs.

The main goal of the accompaniment is to strengthen the abilities of individuals and families to deal with difficulties related to the disappearance of their relatives and to eventually resume their social lives.

They can do this by maximizing their resources and those available in the community and by creating a support network.

“Accompaniers” who have experienced the loss of a loved one were trained to set up peer-support groups of 6-8 people from the same area.

They have been meeting twice a month in the last six months, all of them wearing face masks and meeting in well-ventilated settings due to COVID-19 protocols.

In these sessions, facilitators teach participants better ways of coping and managing stress.

The participants share their emotions, daily struggles, and positive memories of the missing loved ones, as well as their roles and the changes they faced after the disappearance.

“Having others experiencing this situation is important for healing. We are not promoting forgetting. We are helping them to learn to live with the ambiguity and create a new hope and meaning in life,” said Sherzod Musrifshoev, ICRC mental and psychosocial support delegate who is based in Iligan City.

The cycle of group sessions is made up of nine psychological and psychosocial support sessions.

When the cycle is completed, families also benefit from 2-3 information sessions that tackle health or legal matters.

In its fifth session, families bring their missing relatives’ favorite food or items and share with the group the memories attached to them.

This is followed by a group commemoration, an activity to represent their missing loved ones.

Participants choose the project and design the implementation themselves, while the ICRC provides them monetary support for the needed materials.

One group decided to plant 45 mahogany trees to symbolize their missing relatives’ presence, while families in Libertad, Misamis Oriental, built a waiting shed and a heart-shaped memorial sign to remember missing loved ones.

“When the accompaniment program concludes, we plan to still gather during special occasions related to our missing loved ones such as birthdays. The heart [sign] symbolizes our love, care, and honor and our respect for our families who disappeared during the Marawi siege,” said Melissa, an “accompanier” from Libertad, Misamis Oriental, whose husband and son remain missing.

The ICRC’s accompaniment program continues to this day, expanding to Zamboanga and Cotabato cities where some families of missing persons live.

For them, time does not heal, answers do. The active search for missing loved ones can continue for decades because the uncertainty of whether a loved one is alive or dead is unbearable and does not allow families to stop searching until they know.

Hundreds of thousands of people are missing around the world as a result of armed conflict, violence, migration, and natural disasters.

Some go missing in action. Some are forcibly disappeared. Each year, thousands lose contact with their loved ones as they flee violence or seek a better life elsewhere.

Many never return and are never heard from again. This represents a global humanitarian tragedy on a large scale.

As of today, more than 145,000 persons are registered as missing by their families with the ICRC, and new cases are added every day.

Far more people are missing and are not registered.

It also only reveals part of the tragedy, as behind every missing person there are countless more people affected. — DVM, GMA News