Women’s Empowerment Takes a Back Seat as Philippines Peace Process Unravels

April 2, 2026

• Anne Marie Goetz and Rob Jenkins

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It has been a grim decade for the UN Security Council’s “Women, Peace and Security” (WPS) agenda, with violence against women in war zones up, women’s participation in peace talks down, funding for frontline women’s organizations drying up, and a global backlash against women’s rights. Among the few success stories the international community could point to was the resolution of the four-decade-long Moro secessionist conflict in the southern Philippines. 

The 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) ended the civil war in the country’s only Muslim-majority region, which killed an estimated 120,000 people and displaced millions. In exchange for laying down its arms and abandoning the goal of independence, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) won a range of concessions, including the creation of a new regional authority with significant powers and a guaranteed share of national revenue.

The CAB also included several provisions to advance gender equality. Women would have guaranteed representation in the parliament of what is now known as the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). A Bangsamoro Women’s Commission would monitor gender issues and create a gender-equality law for the new region. Members of the MILF’s women’s brigade would, like their male counterparts, be decommissioned and receive benefits.

The gender-responsiveness of the 2014 peace deal is widely seen as reflecting women’s role in forging it: a leading feminist peace researcher and advocate headed the government’s negotiating team, while a prominent women’s rights campaigner served as presidential peace advisor. Both pushed for consultations with women’s organizations and even persuaded the all-male MILF team to appoint women lawyers from the Muslim community as legal advisors. Since 2019, the MILF-led interim BARMM parliament, whose members have so far been appointed rather than elected, has included several women in leadership roles.

The Philippines government has not been shy about touting its commitment to WPS. It frequently highlights its status as the first country in Asia to devise a National Action Plan on WPS (in 2010). Its current bid for a seat on the UN Security Council in 2027-29 has stressed the inclusive nature of the Bangsamoro peace process. Soon after taking office in 2022, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr told the UN General Assembly that the involvement of women and other stakeholders had created a “solid foundation for self-government” in the Bangsamoro. He emphasized this theme again in a speech delivered in March 2026 during meetings of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

The Philippines may well deserve a seat on the Security Council, but not necessarily because of how women’s rights are faring in the post-conflict Bangsamoro region.  In the past year, despite a large and active national network of civic and policy actors invested in implementing WPS, the commitment of regional and national actors to institutionalize gender equality in the BARMM has been exposed as extremely thin.

The indications of WPS backsliding are receiving relatively little attention mainly because of the other grave threats to the Bangsamoro peace process that have emerged during this period – notably, the deepening of divisions within the former rebel army, some of whose members might be tempted to join forces with violent extremists; the decision of the MILF’s senior leadership to halt the process of decommissioning its combatants in protest at Manila’s interference with the selection of the BARMM’s leadership; and the region’s failure to hold elections for the new parliament seven years after its first set of appointed members took office.

An easily subverted quota

A recent example of backsliding concerns amendments to the Bangsamoro Electoral Code that were passed in February by the interim parliament. As originally filed, the bill proposing changes to the code included, without explanation, a provision to reduce the required share of women on regional parties’ candidate lists from a hard-won 30 percent to 20 percent. The 30 percent level was eventually restored thanks to interventions from women parliamentarians. But the effort to roll back the quota was a reminder that there are conservative forces in the region that remain hostile to gender equality.

The women’s electoral quota was already weak by international standards. It applied to only half the parliament’s seats, those awarded on the basis of a party’s region-wide vote share, and not to those seats that represent geographic districts. Further, the 30 percent quota did not specify where on a party’s candidate list women were to be located, allowing parties to shunt them into positions where they were unlikely to win a seat.

The best that the small cohort of liberal members of the interim parliament could get inserted into the newly amended electoral code was a provision saying that, ‘as far as practical,’ parties should make every third candidate on their lists a woman. This language opens a massive loophole that parties are likely to exploit, and is indicative of continued resistance to the affirmative measures the WPS agenda calls for to ensure women’s representation.

There is ample reason for concern about women’s representation in the future Bangsamoro Parliament.  Our analysis of the candidate lists for the elections that were supposed to be held in May 2025 shows that few of the nominees for district seats were women.  While all regional party lists included 30 percent women, as required, the parties with the best prospects had relegated most of their women candidates far down their lists. Had elections been held, it was unlikely that more than seven or eight women would have been elected in a parliament of 73, which is around ten percent.  

Unfortunately, the provision in the newly amended regional electoral code that requires parties to include one woman within each group of three candidates on their lists is unlikely to produce a better result. Even if parties decide it is ‘practical’ to comply, any positive impact could be offset by another new provision in the electoral code that lowers the share of the region-wide vote that parties must obtain to win a single seat. As a result, smaller, territorially concentrated parties have proliferated – from seven to twenty. These parties would not have met the old cutoff for obtaining a parliamentary seat, but now may be just able to win one. How many parties whose best hope is for a single seat in parliament will place a woman first on their candidate lists? 

Conservative backlash

Since the MILF assumed leadership of the BARMM in 2019, the interim regional parliament has slow-walked the peace agreement’s gender-equality provisions. The Bangsamoro Women’s Commission (BWC) was set up, as required, but with limited resources and with a patronage appointee at its head. The MILF-led government has little incentive to build the capacity of an institution that, if it does its job correctly, could result in policy decisions that alienate conservative sections of society while exposing shortcomings in the regional government’s performance on gender-equality.

After seven years in office, the interim parliament has still not adopted a regional Gender and Development (GAD) Code, as required under the peace agreement. Drafts have been prepared by the BWC since 2022. As recently as 2025, it appeared that a version acceptable to the majority was nearly ready. A member of parliament who has since left the BTA told us, however, that the GAD Code had stalled because of resistance from conservative, usually MILF-affiliated, religious leaders, both in parliament and in the wider society. Among these were members of the MILF-appointed Darul-Ifta, the regional government’s office for religious guidance, who were given an opportunity to provide “the Islamic perspective regarding the issue of gender and development.”

While highly accomplished women serve in leadership positions in the interim government and parliament, they are present only in small numbers. WPS advocates are concerned that women’s inclusion is being deprioritized.  Two of the BARMM’s three women ministers were dropped from the regional cabinet in March 2025. One of these was the sole woman on the MILF’s Central Committee. When there was a leadership change at the top of the interim government, space was made for followers of the ascendant camp by reducing the number of women in the 80-member body from 16 to 10. Among the women dropped, as in earlier instances, were highly effective advocates for women’s rights. The Marcos administration approved these changes, without effectively working to sustain or increase the number of women in the interim parliament.

That conservative political forces in the BARMM and key decision-makers in the national government appear uninterested in advancing women’s full political representation is not on its own a sign of serious backlash, not even when considered alongside the delayed regional GAD code. But as part of a broader pattern, in which positions on gender issues appear to stand as markers of political difference among increasingly hostile factions, it is worrying.

A notable example was the reaction of MILF politicians and associated religious leaders to the passage of a national law in 2021 banning marriages in which either partner is below the age of 18, and holding any adult who abets such a marriage criminally liable. Women affiliated with the MILF, even indirectly through their work in civil society, were pressured to stop speaking out in favor of the child marriage ban because it does not exempt Muslims on religious grounds. The head of the Bangsamoro Women’s Commission, who had long been outspoken on the need to stop child marriage, went virtually silent on the issue – a development that other women leaders in the region told us they found troubling. Some prominent feminists, including at least one member of the interim parliament, have remained consistent in their support for a child marriage ban. But others, reportedly to win favor with MILF leaders, claimed that imposing a nationwide ban on child marriage deprives Muslims of “religious freedom” and undermines the governance autonomy the peace deal was supposed to have guaranteed the region.

The Darul-Ifta, as part of its contribution to the GAD Code, also issued, in November 2024, an advisory opinion on the subject of ‘sexual perversion and homosexuality.’ It flatly subordinates LGBTQ+ rights claims to what it calls the rights of “the majority,” and warns against the evils of allowing such identities to become normalized. The religious scholars and clerics who comprise the Darul-Ifta, and sign its reports, noted that the punishment for sodomy is death, but conceded that as members of an advisory council they lacked the power to carry out such a judgement.

There have been incidents of intimidation of homosexual couples and individuals in the BARMM, sometimes involving attacks by MILF fighters or fringe insurgent groups. In November 2025, the mayor of a municipality located in an MILF-dominated area, who is aligned with the MILF’s political party, ordered local government officials to ensure that any LGBTQ+ people in the jurisdiction reported to the town hall. Cohabiting same-sex couples were also to be separated, by force if need be.

Manila’s responsibility

There have been opportunities for the Marcos administration to stand up for the gender provisions of the peace agreement and for the rights of women and other groups in the region, including non-Muslim indigenous communities, which have been subjected to political violence and land dispossession. The Marcos administration could have voiced concerns about the failure of the MILF-led interim administration to take vigorous action to enforce the child marriage ban, or to at least publicly rebut the claims made against the legislation. It could have insisted on the passage of a regional GAD code, or condemned the Darul-Ifta’s extreme statements on LGBTQ+ people. It did not.

The failure of President Marcos and his advisors to act – or at least speak out forcefully – in response to adverse developments on gender issues in the BARMM could, in theory, stem from a desire not to violate the spirit of autonomy on which the peace deal rests.  That would be a plausible explanation had the president’s advisors not already demonstrated a willingness to interfere in even the most delicate aspects of Bangsamoro politics.  In March 2025, in what appeared to many a violation of the peace agreement’s terms, Marcos fired the chairman of the MILF as chief minister, and replaced him with someone more amenable to advancing the president’s own political fortunes.

Manila’s failure to take robust action to reverse the backsliding on women’s rights in the post-conflict Bangsamoro comes at a perilous moment internationally, just as the current United States administration and like-minded governments have been reversing women’s rights protections and attacking gender equality as a key goal of the international community.  Under these circumstances, the Philippines may find that, in seeking support from UN member states for its Security Council bid, the country’s extensive experience with gender-responsive peacebuilding is no longer a selling point.

But the Marcos administration need not succumb to that logic. A robust defense of international norms around women’s rights by a country from the global south, especially one with a large women’s rights movement and strong legal provisions on gender equality, is vital for reviving the WPS agenda. To credibly carry the torch for liberal peacebuilding, however, Manila must more convincingly ensure that the BARMM delivers on the gender-equality and social-justice commitments encoded in the peace agreement.

Note: This article draws on research conducted as part of the London School of Economics’ Gender, Justice and Security Hub. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Hub or of GIWPS.

Anne Marie Goetz is a Clinical Professor at the Center for Global Affairs, School of Professional Studies, New York University, and is a Professorial Fellow Emeritus at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, where she worked from 1991 to 2005.  She served at the United Nations (UNIFEM and UN Women) from 2005-2014 as a policy director on governance, peace and security. Dr. Goetz has published on gender mainstreaming, gender and good governance, democratization and accountability, and conflict resolution. Currently, she is completing a book manuscript, co-authored with Rob Jenkins (CUNY) on the politics of peacebuilding in the Philippines.

Rob Jenkins is Professor of Political Science at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY), where he is also a Faculty Associate in the Human Rights Program at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. He has published widely on post-conflict peacebuilding (e.g., the role of the United Nations), on the politics of governance reform (e.g., rights-based approaches to development), and on the politics of India (e.g., the role of business in policymaking).