Marawi Families Resettled to Iligan in 2017 Are Packing Again as the Rivers Rise
Second-displacement is the pattern across Lanao. DSWD's 2026 reintegration budget covers transport and a starter pack, not a second life.
Nine years after the Marawi siege, families who were moved to Iligan resettlement sites in 2017 are being moved again. This time the reason is not artillery. It is the Mandulog and Tubod rivers, which have flooded three rainy seasons in a row, and the engineered channels that were supposed to hold them.
The same households have now been displaced twice inside a decade. Once by war, once by water. The paperwork from the first move has not even closed.
The second-displacement pattern across Lanao
Across Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur, resettlement sites built fast after 2017 are sitting on floodplains, near creeks, or downstream of denuded slopes. Agencies picked the land because it was available and cheap, not because it was safe. Maranao evacuees were told to stop being temporary and start being permanent on lots that flood by August.
Local NGOs working in the Lanao corridor have flagged the same pattern for years: transitional shelters quietly becoming permanent, drainage plans never built, hazard maps updated but not acted on. Families who lost homes inside Marawi's main battle area are now losing the second home too, this time without the international attention.
Some have moved a third time, into relatives' houses in Iligan proper, into rented rooms in Cagayan de Oro, or back toward Marawi neighborhoods that are still rubble. The cycle is the point. Every move resets whatever savings, schooling, and small livelihoods the family rebuilt.
What DSWD's 2026 reintegration budget actually covers
DSWD's reintegration line items for displaced families in 2026 read like a starter pack, not a recovery plan. Transport assistance to a designated site. A one-time cash grant under emergency assistance windows. A food pack for the first weeks. Limited livelihood seed funding through Sustainable Livelihood Program tracks, which require documentation many evacuees no longer have.
What it does not cover: replacement housing on safer land, long-term rental support while permanent units are built, school transfer fees, medical continuity for elders who were already on maintenance meds, or the lost income from the months it takes to restart a small store. Mental health support is technically listed and practically absent in most municipalities.
The agency is also working under the assumption that displacement is a single event with an endpoint. The Lanao reality is that it is recurring. There is no budget code for being displaced twice.
Who absorbs the gap
The gap gets absorbed by the same families, plus the relatives hosting them, plus the Maranao civil society groups that have been doing distribution work since 2017 on donor money that is drying up. Bangsamoro regional offices coordinate where they can. LGUs in Iligan are stretched thin running their own flood response.
The families being moved this month have already learned what the agency forms cover and what they don't. They are packing light because they have done this before. The starter pack arrives. The second life does not.
