Cotabato City (March 31, 2020)—When the Bangsamoro Organic Law was ratified, anticipation poured in with the new bureaucracy in place. How will the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao address some of the most pressing issues in the region? What difference does it have compared to the defunct ARMM? Will it truly address the shared…
Cotabato City (March 30, 2020)—Mohalidin Latip was nostalgic as he recalled how he and his troop camped in the jungle, dauntlessly waiting for a possible encounter with the military. He was only 20 years old when he joined the Bangsamoro’s struggle for self-determination and autonomy over ancestral lands in Mindanao. For Latip, being a combatant…
Cotabato City (March 29, 2020)—As the Bangsamoro region faces a pandemic crisis, the quest towards moral governance continues. A year ago today, a decades-long struggle of talking peace with the Philippine Government was put to halt when the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) was finally inaugurated on March 29, 2019. This was after…
Cotabato City (March 29, 2020)—The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) marks its first anniversary today, March 29, 2020. According to Chief Minister Ahod ‘Al Haj’ Murad Ebrahim, the Bangsamoro Government originally planned to hold commemoration activites, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, “the Bangsamoro Government will instead focus on service delivery for its…
Cotabato City (March 27, 2020)—The Bangsamoro Inter-Agency Task Force (BARMM-IATF) on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has traced and verified 37 of the initially identified 196 Filipino attendees to a Tabligh (Islamic preachers) gathering held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, late February 2020. According to Minister Dr. Saffrullah Dipatuan of the Ministry of Health (MOH), “just to…