Yearly Archives: 2006

OFWs, many of them women, are fleeing strife-ridden Mindanao to look for jobs in war-torn Middle East. For salaries that hardly uplift their lives at home, is government exporting OFWs…

As tribes denounce killings of 72 indigenous peoples What could be the reasons for the Philippine government?s refusal to vote for the adoption of the draft United Nations Declaration on…

A Filipino-Lebanese family in Davao tries to pick up the pieces of a life torn apart by the war in Lebanon.

By Germelina A. Lacorte
davaotoday.com

DAVAO CITY — All they really want right now is for the war to stop so that they can go back home and continue life where they left off.

Anthony Ballouz, 18, and his brother, Ronald, 16, express this wish as they watch footages of downtown Beirut on television in their mother?s home in Buhangin here, where they sought refuge from the war that broke out between Israeli troops and the Hezbollah guerillas in the southern part of Lebanon.

The four Ballouz brothers were among the Filipino Lebanese children whose families have been torn apart because of the war. Their father, George Ballouz, a Lebanese businessman, had to stay behind as the three brothers were ferried out of Beirut to take a flight aboard the Jordanian Aviation plane from Syria to follow their mother and youngest brother in Davao. They were among the second batch of Filipinos arranged by the Philippine embassy to be brought to the Philippines early last week.

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Moro scholar Abhoud Syed M. Lingga, executive director of the Institute of Bangsamoro Studies, argues that third parties are crucial in the search for peace in Mindanao. "Involvement of third…