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BANGSAMORO GOVERNMENT CENTER (BGC), Cotabato City — Bangsamoro Chief Minister Ahod “Al-Haj Murad” Ebrahim received a courtesy visit from the Japanese Government, His Excellency Ambassador Endo Kazuya, on Tuesday, 18 June 2024 / 12 Dhul Hijjah 1445 AH.
His Excellency and the Chief Minister discussed the updates on the peace process and how the Japanese government can continue its support for the peace process and the development of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
The Ambassador shared that the Japanese government remains committed to the successful implementation of all provisions of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), which the Philippine Government (GPH) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) signed on March 27, 2014.
Established in 2018 by the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) to implement the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), the Bangsamoro region is made up of the provinces of Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi, the cities of Cotabato, Lamitan, and Marawi, as well as the Special Geographic Area’s (SGA) 63 barangays or villages that voted “Yes” in a plebiscite in February 2019 to be under the BARMM jurisdiction. With the recent plebiscite at SGA, the BARMM now has eight new municipalities as residents voted “Yes”.
According to the Philippine Atlas BARMM has 4,404,288 people. It has 116 municipalities (plus eight newly established under the SGA: Basilan, 11 municipalities; Lanao del Sur, 39; undivided Maguindanao, 36; Sulu, 19; and Tawi-Tawi, 11. Its component cities are Cotabato (the regional center and capital) in Maguindanao; Lamitan in Basilan; and Marawi in Lanao del Sur.
It can be recalled that the Japanese Government has been consistently providing various forms of assistance to the Mindanao peace process since at least the time of the signing of the 1996 Final Peace Agreement (FPA) which the GPH forged with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).
Much of the assistance provided by the Japanese Government were made through through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
Today, the FPA and the CAB are the two major reasons the Philippines, particularly Central Mindanao in Southern Philippines, has been experiencing a generally peaceful environment. While there are still fighting in the Bangsamoro region, the clashes are mainly with groups the national government had classified as “terrorists”, but of much smaller scale compared to the past conflicts pitting the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) with the MNLF and the MILF as revolutionary organizations. — BARMM report with EDD K. USMAN (✓)