COTABATO CITY (June 29, 2025) — More than a thousand internally displaced Moro villagers in the troubled Datu Salibo town in Maguindanao del Sur had received cash assistance and vital provisions from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Officials of the Bangsamoro government, among them Chief Minister Abdulrauf Macacua and Regional Health Minister Kadil Sinolinding, Jr. separately told reporters on Sunday, June 29, that they are grateful to the ICRC’s office in Cotabato City for having embarked on the relief missions, from June 24 to 26, in Datu Salibo.
Besides food supplies, the ICRC also gave 200 marginalized families in the municipality, displaced by armed conflicts and floods, a P4,500 cash grant each.
The relief missions were led by the Moroccan Rim Hajji, ICRC’s head of office in Cotabato City.
“The families have faced many challenges since they were displaced by armed conflicts. We hope that the assistance they have received could help pave the path to their recovery,” Hajji said.
The transnational ICRC is a neutral, impartial and independent humanitarian organization, whose main mission is to serve victims of armed conflicts regardless of national and ethnic origins and religions.
“The presence of an ICRC team in Cotabato City, serving our displaced constituents in BARMM provinces, complements the Bangsamoro government’s relief works for conflict and calamity-stricken areas. For that we are thankful,” Macacua said,
The beneficiaries of the ICRC’s outreach activity in Datu Salibo are from interior areas in the municipality, forced to abandon their homes due to recurring conflicts in recent years between government forces and the now weakened Dawlah Islamiya and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.
More than 700 members of both terror groups had surrendered to units of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and the Army’s 6th Infantry Division in the past three years, but the evacuees are still in evacuation sites due to the perennial floods in the villages that they abandoned due to security problems.
Most of the original enclaves of the internally displaced residents are close to rivers and swamps connected to the now heavily-silted 220,000-hectare Ligawasan Delta, a catch basin for more than a dozen large rivers that spring from mountain ranges in Bukidnon, Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, South Cotabato, Maguindanao del Norte and Maguindanao del Sur provinces.
The Ligawasan Delta overflows during rainy days, causing the inundation of low-lying villages in towns around. (JFU, June 29, 2025, Cotabato City)