KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
It’s been a decade since the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Philippines government signed the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, which ended nearly 50 years of conflict in the southern Philippines. Despite setbacks and tensions along the way, implementation of the agreement has yielded notable successes in recent years — most notably the establishment of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) in 2019 and, with it, an unprecedented period of relative peace and stability. However, the final months of 2024 have brought yet another twist in this long-standing struggle for peace in the Bangsamoro region.
In September, the Philippines Supreme Court announced its decision to remove Sulu province from the autonomous region. This immediately cast doubts on whether the Bangsamoro’s first elections, scheduled for May 2025, would go ahead. For over three months, uncertainty about the election fueled tensions that had been lurking uneasily beneath the surface ever since 2022 — the year the BARMM’s first elections were originally scheduled before they were postponed for three years.
Then, on December 18, the Philippines House of Representatives voted to reschedule the election to May 2026. While the law must still be cleared by the Senate, then signed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., it seems likely that another year will be added to the transition and the peace process.
Given that it’s been five years since the BARMM was established via plebiscite in 2019 — and that elections have already been delayed once — it’s understandable that another election delay is raising important questions about exactly how democratic this fledgling autonomous region is turning out to be.
If, as is expected, the Bangsamoro’s first elections are pushed to May 2026, there must be no further delays. The BARMM was established democratically, and the peace agreement requires that the Bangsamoro’s destiny ultimately be handed over to its first democratically elected government.
A third extension would make it near impossible to sustain any credibility in claims that the Bangsamoro peace process has succeeded or that the BARMM is a democracy. It would also fuel deeper frustrations among the BARMM’s most vulnerable communities that could rupture into violence.
A third extension would make it near impossible to sustain any credibility in claims that the Bangsamoro peace process has succeeded
However, a 12-month extension could be seen as an opportunity to get the endgame of the Bangsamoro peace process right. The ultimate objective should remain fulfilling the requirements necessary for an exit agreement to be signed before the proposed 2026 elections. While progress remains sound on the legal and political track of the peace process, the normalization track — which involves the decommissioning of former MILF combatants, the transformation of six camps, and other objectives — has been plagued by implementation problems.
There are still some 14,000 former combatants that remain unprocessed, as well as discontent among some of the roughly 26,000 that have already been decommissioned. This discontentment is rooted in a belief that the full package of promised incentives for decommissioning has simply not been delivered. Those still to be decommissioned often express concerns that they too will not receive the full suite of support necessary to essentially re-start their lives. And for those former combatants living in conflict-impacted areas, a deep sense of vulnerability arises from the prospect of giving up their arms while seemingly surrounded by violent peace spoilers — underscoring the closely dependent relationship between peace and security objectives.
There is no getting around it: The normalization track must be treated as an urgent priority throughout 2025, especially by the Philippines’ national government given its responsibilities under the terms of the peace agreement. After all, the decommissioning of 40,000 former combatants constitutes only part of a comprehensive normalization track that consists of security, socioeconomic development, transitional justice, reconciliation, and confidence-building (amnesty) components. Problems in the normalization track are a microcosm of broader concerns.
There are also broader concerns among Bangsamoro communities that peace dividends have not been delivered as promised. And nowhere is this feeling more acute than in the region’s isolated and poverty-stricken communities, many of which still live under a pall of violence and insecurity. It is no coincidence that these communities also tend to have the highest concentration of former MILF combatants. This creates a compounding cycle of dashed expectations that peace spoilers are ready and keen to exploit.
The harsh reality is that so much focus, time and resources have been devoted to the top-down politics of peace while not enough has been devoted to the bottom-up practicalities of upholding that peace. Far more attention and resources need to be devoted to simply delivering on promises. In the Bangsamoro’s most vulnerable communities, this bar is remarkably low but consistently unreached: three meals a day, basic health and education services, and a regular government presence beyond the overstretched and under-resourced security sector.
Of course, there are many more issues to address than those raised here. But the normalization track and the delivery of peace dividends in vulnerable communities are arguably the most critical for achieving sustainable, long-term peace and stability.
Even though the challenges ahead are significant, they are not insurmountable. What will make these challenges insurmountable is the creeping sense of inevitability about the destiny of peace in the Bangsamoro that has become more noticeable in recent years. After such a long struggle for peace, this sense of inevitability typically emerges as a form of sunk-cost fallacy, where one believes that peace is destined to succeed because of what’s been done so far.
This sense can be further fueled by the emerging lifestyle of being a “peacemaker,” where sustaining the process itself becomes incentivized in pursuit of personal clout or status and the never-ending procession of meetings and consultations so easily masquerade as both necessary and a sign of progress. They rarely are.
In reality, all that really matters now is urgent, decisive action to deliver where it matters most: in the lives of constituents. To do so, officials and stakeholders will need to prioritize addressing normalization problems and devote greater resources and focus to the Bangsamoro’s most vulnerable communities over the next year.
If an election extension is formally approved by President Marcos, a comprehensive public messaging campaign should focus on providing clarity and certainty on the next steps, with an emphasis on acknowledging and closing say-versus-do gaps that erode credibility. The extension should be unequivocally framed as a “reset,” where all involved have a final chance to make history and lead the Bangsamoro peace process to success where other peace efforts around the world have failed. With the terms of the peace agreement as the fundamental roadmap, the mantra moving forward is simple: deliver.
Under the Marcos administration, the Philippines has embarked on an audacious national security, foreign policy and defense trajectory that has seen it emerge as a key player in Asia’s peace and security architecture.
The Philippines military must continue its efforts to modernize and re-posture itself away from internal security and toward territorial defense — and China’s incessant aggression in the West Philippine Sea serves as a near-weekly reminder of why. For context, around 40 percent of the Philippines military’s battalions are currently deployed in Mindanao. Further or worsening conflict and instability in the autonomous region would make it near impossible for the Philippines to hold its current course.
For all the reasons noted above, the Philippines must bring peace to its restive south. It is that simple. The Bangsamoro’s first elections are necessary for that to happen. But another year to close the endgame can really help.