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MARAWI CITY, Philippines — Displaced residents in the country’s Islamic City spent the eighth anniversary of the devastating 2017 siege bewailing a recent cutoff in government aid and a slow compensation process blocking their capacity to rebuild lost livelihood.
Different groups of internally displaced persons and advocates under the Reclaim Marawi Movement held a brief protest rally in front of the new Rizal Park, just across pockmarked ruins and wild fields of Napier grass, demanding a return to their old homes and faster payout of their compensation claims
The government of then-president Rodrigo Duterte expropriated land in four barangays that saw the heaviest fighting in the five-month Marawi siege to “build back better.”
Residents with homes and businesses in these areas have been barred from returning. Some permanently, with government projects replacing their old work and residential spaces. Some, until the Marawi Compensation Board (MCB) can untangle multiple claims on lands or find a way to divide compensation among “sharers” — usually multiple families living in clan compounds, or renters and co-owners of properties.
While swanky infrastructure are replacing the physical wounds of war here, trauma lingers among the displaced, who continue to struggle in an economic limbo.
Rizal Park, with its huge buildings, including one nuzzling a minaret of an abandoned mosque, stands on a filled-up gorge where residents say many still unidentified remains were found after the war. The government also built a nearby business park, still largely empty, a convention center, and a peace park with a stadium and a colorful ferris wheel.
It is a contrast as stark as the yawning gap between the Marawi Compensation Board’s upbeat technical report for President Ferdinand Marcos’ 2025 State of the Nation Address and displaced communities’ rundown of the impact of dislocation.
Few Marawi folk actually enjoy the benefits of the new infrastructure, according to Tirmizy Abdullah, history professor at the Marawi State University main campus.
“Our businesses cannot tap the business park, many of these new facilities are often locked, inaccessible to locals,” said Abdullah.
University students attending a citizen journalism workshop joked about new “private properties” of city, province, and regional political elite — the most frequent users of the post-war structures.
ISOLATED. More than 400 households of displaced Marawi residents living in the Hirja Dulay transitory site face the burden of exorbitant transport costs if they want to earn a living in the city center ten kilometers from their hillside village. Photo by Inday Espina-Varona/RapplerUpbeat report
Marawi Compensation Board information officer Fahad Madid spoke before the May 23 IDP Forum, jointly organized by communities and non-government groups like Kalimudan sa Ranao, Inc. and Initiatives for International Dialogue.
The MCB’s SONA Tech report 2025 (July 2024 to April 2035) said that before Marcos assumed office, there was “no formal structure for assessment, evaluation, or deliberation,” nor were claims processed.
However, the agency’s claim of “a quicker, fairer resolution, with reduced backlog” worked only from a zero baseline.
Of 14,497 filed claims, the government has awarded 1,124 of 1,480 approved claims — less than 10%.
It disapproved 172 claims and consolidated 257 claims involving sharers, renters, or co-owners.
The total value of approved claims tops P2.5 billion, with P1.93 billion awarded, the MCB said.
But the pledge to complete all claims by the time Marcos’ term ends in 2028, is seen as very slow among residents of two temporary shelter sites, and one permanent relocation village that Rappler visited on May 23.
Heavy economic burden
At the Gadongan permanent relocation site, the high cost of accessing jobs and education has saddled more than a fifth of its residents with double living expenses.
“Livelihood is the most urgent need” in this community of cookie cutter homes nestled in the foothills of Mt Gurain, 8.5 kilometers from “Ground Zero” and 9.6 kilometers from Marawi State University (MSU).
“Before the siege, our entire clan, from adults to children, had livelihood,” recalled Nashiba R. Usman, president of the Pamayandeg Ranao Residences @ Dansalan homeowners’ group.
The Usman family’s tailoring shop in the old market, near the city’s new stadium, was big enough to employ kin and neighbors. Now, patrons won’t travel to them.
To get to the city center, each of the family workers will have to pay P70 in one-way transport. At night, the fare goes up to P100.
“Our old homes may not have been nice, but we earned enough to ensure the future of our children,” said Usman. “Ngayon, may bahay ka nga, di ka naman makakain. Di mo nga halos mapa-aral ang mga anak mo.” (Now, yes, you have a house, but you can’t eat. We can barely send our kids to school.)
“We are grateful for the new house,” said Sorayda Sultan, vice president of the women-dominated homeowners’ group, “but most of us here don’t have work.”
More than 100 of around 514 breadwinners have decamped to the city, renting weekday homes, an extra expense they can hardly afford.
“That is why we are appealing to the government to increase the speed of releasing our claims,” said Sultan, who stressed that residents need some breathing room.
WAITING TO RELOCATE. Akisah M Lansao, a community leader in the Hirja Dulay transitory site says she needs the receive compensation to relocate her children and elderly parents in an environment more conducive for livelihood and education. Photo by Inday Espina-Varona/RapplerThe situation is worse in the Hijra Dulay transitory site, ten kilometers from the city center.
Akisah Acol Gondarangin, a 28-year old mother of three said a worker or entrepreneur needs P300 daily for round trip fare. During emergencies or late at night, fare could increase to P200.
Even employees in major urban centers would be hard pressed to shoulder that daily transport cost.
Gandarangin’s husband drives a rented trike but trips are rare when neighbors have no money, leaving income after lease to just P1000 a week.
“If they can’t give us back our homes, maybe they should offer free or subsidized transport,” said Gandarangin.
Her primary school children have to walk down a clay road that is either slippery or full of billowing dust to attend class, a 30-minute trek one way.
“We just need to be paid for what they took from us so we can move on and leave shelters, and rebuild our lives,” stressed Akisah M Lansao, a community leader.
“It’s very hard here. We have water problems. When supply is low, we need to buy our stocks. We pay for electricity. I have a hard time with small children and parents to care for.”
Where’s the ayuda?
Duterte may have crushed their lives but Marawi folk bear the Marcos government a grudge for the halt to food aid.
It may have been the deluge of local and foreign aid in the few years after the siege that cushioned Duterte’s reputation, reflected in the huge crowd that protested his arrest preparatory to facing trial for crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court.
Foreign NGOs and governments have had to focus on other recent global humanitarian crises, especially in the Middle East.
When the Marcos government should have stepped up aid to Marawi locals, it dropped the ball.
Hijra residents’ organization president Nasser Bongcarawan said the last aid they received was two years ago, from the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
“There has been nothing for a whole year,” he said.
His village mate Farouk Acmad spewed anger during the interview.
“Ang relief talagang pabaya,” he said with flailing arms. (The forgot about the relief assistance.)
“We have no jobs. Even our sari-sari stores are failing because people cannot afford to buy anything, and they have a hard time paying their debts,” Acmad added in Filipino.
The same claim was echoed in the Borongan temporary shelter site by Almairah M. Indoi, representative of 74 households in the site’s 4th division.
“Eight years and we cannot improve our homes; the government has forgotten us. So many IDPs have fled because life here is too tough, from everyday food expenses, to transportation, to their children’s education.”
Division 2 leader Subair B Mangadang groused that the challenges increased when the government started charging rent for their temporary homes.
“I pay P500 rent, and P200 for electricity. Others who cannot get back their livelihoods have a hard time with these costs,” he pointed out.
In Hijra, residents are bracing for June, when they may have to start paying rent, too.
“We are told to be responsible, but we don’t see that from the government,” said Acmad. – Rappler.com
