Poverty Reduction: BARMM, NAPC, 4Ps

One of the reasons many of us in civil society say that we feel responsible for the problem of poverty in the country is that we have been engaging our government in writing into a law the policy for poverty reduction. The reason why the NGO movement regard the Social Reform and Poverty Alleviation Act ( R.A. 8425) which created the National Anti- Poverty Commission (NAPC) as one of its gains is because, as NGOs, we participated in writing the narrative of this social reform agenda during the Ramos Administration.

We know that NAPC continues to engage fourteen (14) basic sectors in particular and the big civil society collective in general. This engagement is towards uniting the fourteen basic sectors in development sites and geographic areas. NAPC has been into policies which “correlates poverty programs with programs for promoting economic growth (and) dividing the country into three economic zones: 1) rural and peri-urban areas….(2) areas further away from urban growth centers but with good resource endowments and ; (3) areas with neither good resource nor logistical connections to urban areas.”

The one thing that must be understood up front is that this engagement is towards influencing policy as the NAPC is not a line agency implementing particular programs. The engagement of basic sectors is through partnership with government agencies because after all it is not the duty of NGOs to implement government programs. So, for example, the NAPC women sectoral council of the basic sector works in partnership with the Philippine Commission on Women, the urban poor sector works with the Phil Commission on the Urban Poor (PCUP).

What is the poverty picture of the Philippines? According to NAPC and the 2011 census: “more than one fourth are poor and ; we have been the only country in Asia where the absolute number of poor have increased ( over the years) from 1990 to 2005.”

Two key components of the NAPC anti poverty strategy which have always been challenges since time immemorial are the strategy for asset reform and employment.

Asset reform is about agrarian reform and the issue of ancestral domain.

Critics of the conditional cash transfer program (4Ps) say that providing employment is more crucial to poverty reduction. Of course, 4Ps or the Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program which has been successful in other parts of the world such as in Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia and Africa is designed to address inter generational poverty by making sure that children have nutrition and are able go to school and the mothers’ health are taken care of. So, even if the 4Ps may not provide jobs now, at least, there is food on the table and the children are able to finish basic education and hopefully find jobs later thus breaking the cycle of poverty. This is what social protection is all about. This way also, we are able to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals ( SDGs) as agreed by a community of nations.

Some members of the basic sectors want to participate in the identification of beneficiaries of this Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program. My sense is that such participation should only be in the area of policy or in setting the criteria for the process of selection of beneficiaries. Civil society or the basic sectors are advocacy partners but are not implementing partners of government programs.

In the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), where majority of the country’s poor provinces are found, poverty reduction program is a crucial track to the peace process by addressing the roots of the armed conflict. Already, the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) has identified three (3) policy priorities:

a) transitional justice;

b) agrarian economy; &

c) electoral system

This will be a crucial track in the new Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) because aside from the issue of identity politics and feudal wars, one of the main reasons for the struggle with peace in most areas is poverty and hunger. In 2005, the Human Development Network in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), etc said “that deprivation and injustice rather than hardship alone, lie at the heart of armed conflict which can be empirically validated and demonstrated (and that) “measures of deprivation do predict the occurrence of armed encounters. Relative deprivation becomes more acute with minoritization.”

Who is afraid of the Bangsamoro?

“Islam is the religion or faith (the way of Allah) while Muslims are those who believe in Islam and attempt to practice it. Islam is an issue of theology. However, what Muslims (human fallible people) make of Islam is an arena open to social scientific inquiry. In other words, how human beings understand and apply Islam in their contemporary realities and daily lives is at least an area of debate not only in the present but also throughout the past history of Muslim communities.” -  Ayesha Imam 

I had a Muslim woman as a godmother at baptism. I have devoted more than two decades of my life working in Muslim communities all over Mindanao.
Actually, our work in Muslim communities is national because our reform proposals are addressed to changing national laws. 
Even as we adhere to the notion that not everything done by Muslims are Islamic and that what is Islam is always being reinterpreted and debated, we believe that Quranic teachings are ultimately about justice and equality. 

A survey research was conducted by our center,  PILIPINA Legal Resources Center (PLRC) in the Philippines on the extent of usage, attitudes, aspirations and behavior of Muslim women in relation to the Code of Muslim Personal Laws (CMPL).

It was found out, among others, that majority of the Muslim women were not familiar about their official legal rights. The solution to the problem of lack of legal literacy is easy. The greater problem, as the survey indicated, is that women’s lack of autonomy is largely cultural and justified by invoking customary laws and religious traditions.

This worldview affects the individual’s ability to participate in every level of social life – from decision-making within her home and family, to education, employment and public life.
Our research findings led us to outreach projects to overcome the problems revealed in the understanding of Muslim women concerning their rights under the law in the Philippines.

We did legal literacy work popularizing the Code of Muslim Personal Laws and promoting an alternative formulation in keeping with the gender equality provision of the Philippine Constitution.

We worked with Shari’a court judges, community stakeholders and policymakers and one of the resulting shapes was the creation of a government search committee that appointed judges to the vacancies in the Shari’a courts and the appointment of women judges which is a showcase to the rest of the Muslim world which still believe that women cannot be judges. 

The Code of Muslim Personal Laws (CMPL) remains as law for all Muslims in the Philippines although it is deemed outdated and contradictory to some 1987 Constitutional provisions, the current organic act (R.A. 9054) for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and international laws. Earlier, former Congressman Michael Mastura, one of the authors of the current CMPL suggested test litigation as an alternative track to the process of legal reform that we were advocating. 

Since legal reform proved difficult, our alternative strategy was engagement with the Sharia court judges on current standards under the UN CEDAW.
We published a Benchbook within the framework of UN CEDAW which may guide Shari’a judges in resolving cases involving Muslim women.

When norms and standards are legislated, these become sources of specific rights that are accessible, enforceable and demandable. Thus, human made legislations such as the Code of Muslim Personal Laws need to be revisited and interfaced with current standards, which have universal mandates such as the UN CEDAW. 
That a community of nations shares this standard is an indication that the promotion of equality between women and men cannot be compromised by making reference to an ever-changing culture or human made religious interpretations and practices. 

The UN CEDAW is now thirty years old and have been ratified by one hundred eighty-six (186) states, which is a great majority of all countries in the world. Gender equality and non-discrimination are now principles of international customary law.

The Philippines, to date, has yet NO official policy on reproductive health and family planning and these are parts of our treaty obligation to the UN CEDAW. As was reported recently by Rappler, “the Philippines is one of the best places to be a woman, based on the latest World Economic Forum (WEF) survey released on October 24. In the 2012 Global Gender Gap Index (GGI), the Philippines maintained its ranking in the top ten gender-friendly nations.”

But, to the extent that women have no control over their own bodies, this gender equality index is meaningless for us, women. But, yes, the Bangsamoro community has a fatwa ( or a decree made by an Islamic authority) on family planning.  
So, with some ustajes from the academe and with some members of the Technical Working Group of the Darul Ifta, we worked for the promotion of the fatwa as part of our reproductive rights program.

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  

The Language Map of the GPH-MILF Peace Talks on Wealth Sharing

Isabelita Solamo Antonio

 The ultimate vision or goal is peace and of course, development of the Bangsamoro region and the Philippines as  well.  One of the main methods is the creation of a new political subdivision with more powers than that which local government units or regions like the current Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao or ARMM are holding now. All political subdivisions such as cities,provinces, and autonomous regions are Congress created.

 The current Constitution provides for autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao. And as well the same Constitution provides that an organic act of an autonomous region shall provide for creation of sources of revenues. This was spelled out in the just concluded annex on revenue generation & wealth sharing. The language in the annex on revenue generation & wealth sharing will guide the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) in drafting the proposed Basic Law. 

Meantime, because time is of the essence, it would be ideal if both the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) & Congress can now start to look at the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro and the annex on wealth sharing and how all these can be translated into a legislative language towards a Bangsamoro basic law, while waiting for the rest of the annexes on power sharing and normalization.

 As to the annex on the power sharing which still has to be finished, the emerging language and the reported talking points are also found in the Constitution and the Local Government Code: reserved powers, concurrent powers and devolved powers. Reserved powers are not given to the autonomous regions such as national defense, foreign affairs, tariff and customs, citizenship, etc

 The Constitution provides that the Organic Act shall define the basic structure of government for the region consisting of the executive and legislative which shall be elective and representative. And as to the judicial matters: for now just personal and civil law.  Judicial matters are both national and regional in Muslim areas ~~ according to the current constitution.

 The CSO statement for the peace panels just before the recent peace talks in Kuala Lumpur was silent on the track of amending the Constitution and used the word “legalization.”  The CSO statement also said that the seeming “delay has already stymied the substantive work of the Transition Commission (BTC) in drafting the Bangsamoro Basic Law and identifying possible processes for the legalization of the upcoming political settlement.”

 The revenue and wealth sharing annex of the Bangsamoro Framework Agreement outlined how the Bangsamoro can have more resources through sharing in taxes, revenues, fund sourcing and sharing of natural resources.

The Bangsamoro’s share of the national taxes collected in the  region shall be three fourths and the national government retains one fourth. The annex on wealth sharing provides that this  is without prejudice to the future Bangsamoro Basic Law remitting the 25% national share to  the region for a “limited period of time.”

 Another breakthrough is the sharing of natural resources: non metallic such as sand and gravel shall pertain to the Bangsamoro, as to metallic, three fourths to the Bangsamoro and as to fossil fuels such as natural gas, the sharing is equal.

 The  Bangsamoro government  will have  the power to contract loans in its name except for loans which require sovereign guarantee,  in which case, the central government shall help facilitate the process.

 There will be automatic budget appropriation and this block grant aside from the Special Development Fund shall not be less than the current budget of the ARMM and both national and Bangsamoro governments  shall review this after a decade based  on revenues generated in the Bangsamoro region.

 It will be all to our interests that there will be peace, so that all these talk about wealth sharing will happen for Mindanao and the Philippines.  ~ written in July 17, 2013

Bangsamoro

Nobody wants war. It will be for all our benefit if there is peace & as we have always said, the way to peace is peace. So, after two years hard work, we have a frame & method to peace for Mindanao. This peace deal or framework to be called a comprehensive agreement & to be signed soon by the government of the Philippines (GPH) & the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is a political document which writes the mechanism & paves the way for the creation of legal instruments for its implementation.

What are the issues or problems that our government is trying to address? What is wrong with the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARRM)? Over the years, the ARMM which was enacted as an entity in 1990 (during the President Cory administration) has not been the answer to the historical marginalization of our Bangsamoro in all spheres: political, economic & social. So, the method towards this new structure & function of the Bangsamoro political entity is spelled out in this political agreement between the GPH & MILF.

Autonomous regions as political subdivisions are written in our constitution. The current enabling law for the ARMM is an Organic Act passed by Congress. As any law can be repealed or amended, this peace deal proposes to replace ARMM with a new political entity called Bangsamoro through a new law still to be passed by Congress. According to GPH peace panel Chair Marvic Leonen, the political commitments of the peace deal ensures a process under the auspices of a Transition Commission which will be created by the President of the Philippines through an executive order; the transition commission of 15 members to be appointed by PNoy will take charge of drafting & engaging with all stakeholders towards the passage of a new law (Bangsamoro Basic Law) for the Bangsamoro political entity. The administration of PNoy will shepherd the passage of the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law by certifying the bill as urgent. Once passed, this Basic law will be ratified by the qualified voters within the territory. When ratified, the created Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) takes the place of ARMM.

In turn, the peace deal maintains that the central government retains the powers of “defense & external security, foreign policy, common market & global trade….coinage & monetary policy, citizenship & naturalization, & postal service.”

The peace panel says that this peace deal builds on the old Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA- AD) during the Arroyo administration which was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. Some of the lessons of that entire process leading to the non signing of the MOA-AD were a deficiency in tactical planning; the MOA-AD as a peace instrument should have been forged as an iconic event and putting as conditions the eventual passage of the legal and constitutional requirements, at some point. Anyway, one of the contentious issues then in the MOA-AD was territory which was deemed expanded. This time, the framework agreement lists the core territory as the current ARMM areas (five province & two cities) plus the areas which voted for inclusion in the autonomous region in the plebiscite of 2001. These areas are 6 towns of Lanao del Norte, towns of North Cotabato, Cotabato City & Isabela City.

What is the proposed governance structure for the Bangsamoro political entity? First, all vested rights of political subdivisions & officials covered by the Local Government Code (RA 7160) will be in effect even after the Bangsamoro law is passed for as long as RA 1760 is not repealed. This means all functions of all governors of all provinces, all mayors & barangay captains of all LGUs under the autonomous region will still be in effect. The peace deal proposes a ministerial form of government for the Bangsamoro. Already, there is a debate now whether the proposed political entity requires charter change. Atty. Marvic Leonen, head of the government peace panel says there is nothing in the article on local government in our Constitution that prohibits a ministerial form of government for the Bangsamoro entity & that anyway, any group of citizens can pursue amendments to the constitution. Still, even if charter amendments are not necessary, one of the functions of the transition commission as written in the peace deal is to be ready to “work on proposals to amend the Phil. Constitution....whenever necessary….”

Who is a Bangsamoro by identity? The framework agreement says all those descendants of the original inhabitants of Mindanao & all those who “identify themselves as Bangsamoro by ascription or self ascription….(but) that the freedom of choice of indigenous peoples shall be respected.”  

One of the important powers listed in the framework agreement pertains to judicial institutions. While the framework agreement recognizes parallel justice institutions such as alternative dispute resolution systems & civil courts, the peace deal writes the “supremacy of the Shari’ah & (that) its application shall only be to Muslims.”  

Bangsamoro women & fellows from PILIPINA Legal Resources Center during a workshop on Gender & Development ( GAD) Programs in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM): A skills building workshop 

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