Brief Background on the Moro Struggle

The Philippine Government has long sought to find ways and means to address the discontent of the Moros in Mindanao. However, efforts in the past have been criticized as mainly assimilationist, without regard to their special characteristics and desire for their right to self-government.

The Moros claim a distinct history and ways of life from the majority-Filipinos who were incorporated in the Spanish colonial regime. They claim they were annexed to the Philippine territory under the American regime, and later in the independent Philippine Republic, without their consent. As a result of economic policies, new land laws, and migration programs that began in the 1900s, the Moros have become minorities in their traditional abode. Today, the Muslim-dominated provinces in Mindanao are among the poorest provinces in the country, with per capita incomes and human development indices below the national average.  In national politics and society, they feel they are discriminated and marginalized. All these have built-up resentment that was mobilized in the form of armed movements against the Philippine state.

The armed conflict in Muslim Mindanao that began in the late 1960s was in the nature of an independence movement. However, since the Tripoli Agreement of 23 December 1976 signed between the Marcos government and the Nur Misuari-led Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the terms of negotiations revolved around crafting an autonomous arrangement within the Philippine state as an expression of the Moro people’s right to self-determination.

Although the 1987 Constitution called for the establishment of an autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao, and Congress subsequently passed Republic Act 6734 in 1989 and Republic Act 9054 (amending RA 6734) in 2001 as part of the terms of  Final Peace Agreement (FPA) signed between the MNLF and the Ramos Administration in 1996, these proved unsatisfactory to both the MNLF and  the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a break-away group of Moro leaders led by Salamat Hashim that was formally constituted in 1984.

The MNLF claims that several key provisions in the 1996 FPA remain unimplemented. The MILF, for its part, wants the highest form of autonomy while remaining an integral part of the Philippine territory.

The Philippine Government has pursued peace negotiations with the Moro liberation groups in order to end the armed conflict, address the social, cultural and economic inequities, and arrive at a viable political arrangement that will reconcile the ideals of Moro self-government, good governance, and national sovereignty.

The road to a peacefully negotiated political settlement has not been easy.  When hostilities broke out in 2000, government spent P1.337 Billion for combat expenses in four (4) months of fighting. After negotiations broke down in August 2008 with the botched Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD), more than five hundred thousand (500,000) people were displaced as a result of the fighting.