A Sacred Agreement

The ink color that was used by GPH peace panel Chair Marvic Leonen to sign the Framework Agreement was red – much like a reference to historic blood compacts of our ancestors.  For the Muslims, too, contracts are sacred. Thus, the event ushers us to a new era of peace – so full of hope. That peace loving Filipinos want to see a renaissance in the centuries old Bangsamoro homeland was so palpable in the outpouring of support and ownership of the peace deal. 

What has gone before? Let’s look back in time.

Historically, the Moro sultanates (a governance structure having all the elements of a state) in Mindanao are older than the Philippine Republic by about five centuries.

Independence movement in Muslim parts of Mindanao emerges in 1967, achieving autonomy for Muslims in five provinces & a city in Mindanao after an Organic Act was enacted by the Philippine legislature. This autonomous area is called the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. In 1977, in an attempt to appease Muslim separatists, a Code of Muslim Personal Laws was enacted as a presidential decree during the martial law regime of former President Ferdinand Marcos.  The enactment was also in keeping with the 1976 Tripoli agreement between the Philippines & the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) which provided, among others, that Muslims should have courts to hear Shari’a law cases. This was also about the time that Moro became a popular word to denote Muslim Filipinos & Bangsamoro to mean a nation or a community of people espousing the right to self determination. 

Twenty years after the 1976 Tripoli agreement, a 1996 Final Peace Agreement between the Philippine government and the MNLF was forged.  In spite of the 1996 peace agreement, war erupted with another MNLF splinter group called the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and government peace talks were initiated anew.

A failed 2008 agreement between the Philippine government & the MILF outlined geographical areas which are beyond the current ARMM.  This Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) was decreed by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. Now, after two years on the negotiating table, a framework agreement has been signed.

The mechanism of plebiscite is the track to ultimately determine the areas of autonomy.

The Organic Act (Republic Act No. 9054) which created the ARMM already provided that the Regional Legislative Assembly of the Autonomous Region In Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), “in consultation with the Supreme Court and consistent with the Constitution may formulate a Shari’a legal system including criminal cases which shall be applicable in the region, only to Muslims or those who profess the Islamic faith.”  And as Islam is a complete code of life for the Muslims, it is expected that Sharia law will inform the basic law for the new Bangsamoro political entity.

The population of Mindanao as of the 2010 government census   by the National Statistics Office is 21,582, 540 & Mindanao is home to about 6.5 million Muslims, which is approximately 30% of the total population of Mindanao.

Many of the poorest provinces in the Philippines are found in Mindanao. All the provinces in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) are among the poorest provinces. As expected, this situation is more difficult for Muslim women. 

The Mindanao conflict was one of the longest running problems in the world.  Which was why, calls and proposals for new political configurations and political projects have come and go and the right to self determination was always at the heart of the discourse. 

Meeting of  Sharia women judges & lawyers in a PILIPINA Legal Resources Center workshop