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.

Peace in the Philippines

Peace as a vision is shared by all, not least by contestants in beauty pageants. For sure, beauty and peace go together.

When popular international singing groups come to the Philippines, they skip Mindanao and Davao City. The conclusion is that terrorism and tourism do not go together.
I could not even convince my fellow development workers in Manila to hold a meeting in beautiful Marawi City because they fear for their lives.

Travel advisories are declared by embassies around the world against our islands, even if terrorism is not a monopoly in our part of the world. As a case in point, was there a travel advisory against UK as an aftermath of the London looting nor of the past bombings in their streets? But, this is another story.

Peace is a development issue and so we will all benefit from a peace agreement that will come out of the ongoing peace talks by the government with both the MILF and NDF. Last week, seventeen peace groups and five funding agencies met to discuss past peace programs and the future of work in this field. It was organized by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and graced by other various funders such as AusAID, The Asia Foundation, UNDP, & JICA.

The themes and tools towards the promotion of peace were all shared by the peace groups: human rights, good governance, community based or indigenous conflict and local dispute resolution, community education, access to justice, law and policy reform. Yet, peace remains as elusive as ever. So, I am convinced that conflict is part of life and so what matters is how we address conflict and that there is so much to learn from the methodology and from the journey to peace per se.

My own project was about access to justice and access to courts. We wanted women to have access to justice but the more basic questions were: (a) what kind of laws do we want our women to have access to or (b) what kind of judges’ orientation do we want our women to have access to? As this turns out, our theme is so relevant given the issues in the impeachment trial of Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Since, we could not get a legislative reform of the Code of Muslim Personal Laws (CMPL) from the past 11th Congress, we went to the UN Cedaw Committee through the Philippine Commission on Women ( formerly the NCRFW) The CMPL is a Marcos presidential decree which is one of the results of the 1976 Tripoli agreement between the Philippines & the MNLF.

We shared the Concluding Remarks of the UN Cedaw Committee to the Sharia Court judges who were convinced that, yes since the Philippines is a signatory to UN Cedaw, we are obliged and bound by the provisions of these international standards of human rights.
We published this peace program and it has been translated to a French and Arabic publication and has been a leverage to promote our advocacy worldwide.

If one is into promotion of human rights and your work can be “googled” in the internet as words as generic as “UN Cedaw and Sharia Courts” or “UN Cedaw & Muslim Personal Laws” and it comes out on page one of search results of popular search engines, that is sheer joy, a psychic reward for a difficult work.

Religion is a complete code of life for our Muslim community and it is part of the current ongoing talks between the Philippines and the MILF and so we adopt the following recommendation for the panels: “laws that are human made, shall as much as possible, be consistent with the UN CEDAW, the Philippine Constitution, and national laws.”

We count as one of the results of our peace work, the adoption as a provision in the ARMM GAD (Gender & Development) Code, the UN CEDAW definition of discrimination. The few words written into law in the ARMM will mean a lot of programs and funds in the promotion of the rights and well being of Muslim women and men. This is what we consider as one of the examples of success in peace work in the Philippines.

UN Cedaw, the Muslim Code & Shari'a Courts

We are examining the interface between the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women
(UN Cedaw) and the Code of Muslim Personal Laws ( Muslim Code). The Philippines has obligations to CEDAW. In turn, the Muslim Code was enacted in 1977 or before the gender equality provision was enshrined in the 1987 Constitution.

Of course, the proposals in this interface and examination which we have compiled in a Thematic Guide Book on CEDAW for Shari’a Court Courts are linked to a network of Muslim women and men partners, Shari’a court judges and lawyers, volunteer Shari’a court monitoring teams and various multisectoral stakeholders in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and Muslim communities outside of the ARMM.

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.

When norms and standards are legislated, these become sources of specific rights that are accessible, enforceable and demandable. Thus, man 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.

Our center, the PILIPINA Legal Resources Center (PLRC) has been working in Muslim communities for more than two decades now or since 1987. Our first ever survey, “The Implications of the Code of Muslim Personal Laws (PD 1083) on the Muslim Women of Regions IX & XII “ was done in 1988 and published a year after. Then the next years were spent on (a) 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; (b) monitoring the Shari’a courts through a Shari’a Court Watch project with judges, community stakeholders and policymakers. A resulting shape was the creation of a government search committee that appointed judges to the vacancies in the Shari’a courts. And as well, two more women judges have been appointed since then, increasing the total number of women judges in our courts and such is a showcase to the rest of the Muslim world which still believe that women cannot be judges.

So, after twenty-two (22) years, this current project with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) allowed us to take note of both the constant things as well as the myriad things that have changed in the justice system structures in Muslim communities. In this sense, the framework of this CEDAW benchbook is informed by an extensive exposure (much like in a longitudinal study) to various structures and perceived changes in Muslim communities in the Philippines over a long period of time. As such, we were able to focus on particular themes, which to us have been the sites of gender inequality and discrimination.

We took note of customs and traditions legislated in the Muslim Code such as child marriage. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has defined a child as every human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier. Our survey of various ages of marriage in twenty Muslim countries reveals that states do not, in fact, consider every one below 18 as a child. Cases in point are Muslim family laws and as our network Women Living Under Muslim Laws published, “courts in Bangladesh, Cameroon, and the Philippines which may grant permission for marriages involving spouses younger than 15 but not younger than 12, while courts in Algeria, Tunisia, Malaysia, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Sudan & Morocco grant permission for marriages involving spouses younger than marriageable age, but family laws are either silent regarding an absolute minimum age or specify a low absolute minimum age or specify a low absolute minimum age.”

One track of reform, which is not yet popular, is to work for the reform of the UN Child Rights Convention and argue that, in fact, not everyone below 18 is a child. Some psychologists call this phenomenon : evolving sexuality.

We are also very happy that there is an Islamic Official Ruling or Fatwa on Reproductive Health and Family Planning issued by the Assembly of Darul-Ifta of the Philippines in November 2003. This is a very relevant document now and a model of sorts since there is an indication that Malacanang is set to prioritize the Reproductive Health bill as urgent.


Gender Justice in the Shari’a Courts


The Sharia ( Muslim Law) is one of the constant themes in the ongoing peace talks, various peace agreements ( 1976 Tripoli Agreement & 1996 Jakarta Accord, etc) and other developments in Mindanao that are participated in by our government, the Organization of Islamic Countries, both the MNLF and MILF and Muslim communities.

The Philippines is one of few countries in the world that have women Shari’a judges as some parts of the Muslim world still think that women cannot be judges. The Code of Muslim Personal Laws (CMPL or Muslim Code) is a “man made law” by virtue of a Presidential Decree in 1977 by former President Marcos or before the gender equality provision was enshrined in our 1987 Constitution. One of the authors of the Muslim Code, Atty. Michael Mastura has maintained that test litigation is an alternative track to a legal reform project of revising the current CMPL. Aside from test litigation and legislation, the other track is dialogue and engagement with the judges of the Sharia courts because as can be seen from court decisions, the Sharia’a judges exercise wide discretion. But, any custom or ada (customary law) that violates women’s rights cannot be justified by any provision of the Code of Muslim Personal Law (CMPL), as this safeguard is written in the Muslim Code itself: “No ada which is contrary to the Constitution of the Philippines, this Code, Muslim law, public order, public policy or public interest shall be given any legal effect.”

A few months back, we interviewed various Sharia court judges as well as examined their ponencia or court decisions and these are some of the recent positive developments:

Ÿ Whereas before, decisions were made ordering women to go back to the conjugal home in cases of restitution of marital rights, now there is a realization that such kinds of orders violates a woman’s autonomy. It is now held by judges that such an order is only persuasive and not mandatory because as marriage is itself a contract, it is based on mutual agreement of the parties.
Ÿ In the past decade, one hardly reads of Shari’a court decisions describing cruelty or violence committed against women in the ponencia. Now, cruelty as a ground for termination of marriage is already described and no longer absent in written decisions.
Ÿ We are now able to read in actual court decisions, divorce by tafwid where the husband delegated to the wife the right to orally divorce him. (SCC C No. 2006-1074, Jolo, Sulu). Oral divorce is still in recent years traditionally the preserve of men.

One positive thing that sets the Philippine Muslim Code from other Muslim countries is the required registration of oral divorce. Also, the Philippine National Statistics Office ( NSO) requires a court decree as proof of divorce.
Yes, we have divorce in the Philippines in Muslim communities since time immemorial.

Both the community and courts have taken cognizance that the following are continuing practices:

Ÿ The four male witness rule in cases in sex related offenses but in the absence of witnesses an oath before the Qur’an ( yamin) is a sacred practice;
Ÿ The marriage of a Muslim woman with a non-Muslim male is still culturally not allowed;
Ÿ The consent in marriage of a minor is given through the marriage guardian (wali) and her consent is presumed as the marriage guardian is deemed to represent the best interests of the child.

The UN CEDAW COMMITTEE made comments about early marriage among Muslim women in the Philippines :

“The Committee expresses its concern about the precarious situation of rural and indigenous women, as well as the Muslim women in the autonomous region of Muslim Mindanao, who lack access to adequate health services, education, clean water and sanitation services and credit facilities. The Committee is also concerned about women’s limited access to justice in cases of violence, especially in the conflict zones, and the lack of sanctions against the perpetrators of such violence. The Committee is furthermore concerned that the practice of early marriage is persistent among Muslim women.”

In the comment above, the UN Cedaw Committee clearly recognizes that there is “a practice of early marriage persistent among Muslim women.” This is in consonance with Article 16 (2) of the CEDAW that states “The betrothal and the marriage of a child shall have no legal effect, and all necessary action, including legislation, shall be taken to specify a minimum age for marriage and to make the registration of marriages in an official registry compulsory.”

The comments concluded with a request from the UN CEDAW Committee to the Philippine government to address the concerns expressed in the concluding comments as well as a request to submit the eighth and ninth report that was due last September 2010.