"The economic costs of the Mindanao conflict has been pegged at more than 3 billion dollars, an estimated 150,000 lives have been lost, and the human and social costs remain immeasurable."

So said Nasreena Sampaco-Baddiri, Chairperson of the Center for Muslim Women Studies and Regional Secretary of the Department of Tourism, Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, speaking at a seminar on fragile and conflict affected states at Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Sampaco-Baddiri said that among those who are affected by the conflict, it is women who suffer the most. They bear the brunt of poverty caused by conflict, suffer from social and cultural forms of gender discrimination and oppression and endure gender based violence in times of war.

The Mindanao conflict has spanned two generations and more than forty years of armed confrontations, and its women have been the silent workers in building cultures of peace in the Philippines.

View the presentation.