A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(June 2015) |
Miriam Coronel-Ferrer | |
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Personal details | |
Nationality | Filipino |
Alma mater | University of the Philippines |
Profession | Professor |
Prof. Miriam Coronel-Ferrer is a Filipino peace negotiator and the chair of the peace panel of the Government of the Philippines during the time of President Simeon Benigno Aquino III (2010-2016). On behalf of government, she signed the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. [1] She is the first female chief negotiator in the world to sign a final peace accord with a rebel group. [2]
She is also a political science professor at the University of the Philippines (UP).
Coronel-Ferrer graduated cum laude from UP Diliman with a degree in philosophy in 1980. She also possesses a master's degree in Southeast Asian Studies from the University of Kent at Canterbury. [3]
In the early 2000s, she served as the director of the UP Third World Studies Center and was a convenor of the Program on Peace, Democratization, and Human Rights of the UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies until 2005. [4]
Before joining the government peace panel, Coronel-Ferrer was already involved in a number of campaigns. She was founding co-chair of the Non-State Actors Working Group of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize winner International Campaign to Ban Landmines, and served in this capacity from 1999-2004. In 2005, she joined 26 other Filipinas nominated among the "1,000 Women for the Nobel" peace prize in 2005. She co-led the civil society-initiated drafting of the National Action Plan (NAP) on UN Security Council Resolution 1325. The Philippine NAP was formally adopted by the government in March 2010.
Appointed by President Benigno Simeon Aquino III to the Government Negotiating Panel in July 2010, she was assigned to her post as Panel Chair on 7 December 2012, replacing Associate Justice Marvic Leonen. [5] [6]
As the chair of the government panel, Prof. Ferrer oversaw the implementation of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro. [7]
Prof. Ferrer has published several books and journal articles on Philippine democratization, civil society, human rights and peace processes, and served as visiting professor in Hankuk University in Seoul, Hiroshima University in Japan, and Gadja Madah University in Yogjakarta, Indonesia.
Awards received by Coronel-Ferrer include the 2015 Hillary Rodham Clinton Award for Advancing Women in Peace and Security, the 2015 Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan Fr. William F Masterson SJ Award, the 2014 United Nations Development Program N-Peace Award for Campaigning for Action, and the 2011 Philippine Science High School Alumni Association Gawad Lagabalab for Outstanding Alumni.
She received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2023. [8]
In the aftermath of the Mamasapano clash, a police operation that successfully killed Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli Abdhir alias Marwan, but led to the killing of 44 police commandos by Moro rebels, Coronel-Ferrer was involved in a tense exchange with Senator Alan Peter Cayetano. Coronel-Ferrer argued that "The government policy is to negotiate with the armed groups that are fighting the government." The Senator responded by saying, "All governments around the world, the policy is not to negotiate with terrorists. If the peace panel does not know that, we’re in trouble." To which Coronel-Ferrer replied that she was "not aware of any such policy." [9]
Coronel-Ferrer's calls for calm in the wake of the clash have drawn criticism from many Filipino netizens. Many have accused her of treason and of rushing the peace process, at the expense of justice. She received death threats and manipulated, sexually explicit images of her spread across the Internet. However, Coronel-Ferrer says she accepts them as "part of the job". [10]
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front is a group based in Mindanao seeking an autonomous region of the Moro people from the central government. The group has a presence in the Bangsamoro region of Mindanao, the Sulu Archipelago, Palawan, Basilan, and other neighbouring islands. The armed wing of the group was the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF), although the name of its parent organization, the MILF, was often used to refer to the BIAF. In July, 2018, the Philippine government passed the Bangsamoro Organic Law, giving more autonomy to Muslims. In return, MILF announced that it would disarm its 30,000 fighters.
Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III, also known as Noynoy Aquino and colloquially as PNoy, was a Filipino politician who served as the 15th president of the Philippines from 2010 to 2016. The son of assassinated politician Benigno Aquino Jr. and 11th president Corazon Aquino, he was a fourth-generation politician as part of the Aquino family of Tarlac.
The Philippine Science High School System is a research-oriented and specialized public high school system in the Philippines that operates as an attached agency of the Philippine Department of Science and Technology. PSHS is considered as the top science high school in the Philippines and is viewed to be among the best in the ASEAN region by 2016.
The Moro conflict was an insurgency in the Mindanao region of the Philippines, which had involved multiple armed groups. Peace deals have been signed between the Philippine government and two major armed groups, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), but other smaller armed groups continue to exist. In 2017, the peace council settled around 138 clan conflicts.
Conchita Carpio-Morales is a former Ombudsman of the Philippines serving from 2011 to 2018. Prior to her appointment as Ombudsman, she held the post of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, served in the Lower Courts, as well as in the Department of Justice. She has secured appointments from five Philippine presidents: Ferdinand Marcos, Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and Benigno Aquino III.
In the late 1960s, an independence movement was founded in Mindanao, the Philippines to separate the Muslim majority-Moro areas from the rest of the Philippines.
Bangsamoro, officially the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao is an autonomous region in the Philippines, located in the southwestern portion of the island of Mindanao.
The Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro is a preliminary peace agreement signed in the Malacañan Palace in Manila, Philippines on October 15, 2012. The agreement calls for the creation of an autonomous political entity named Bangsamoro, replacing the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) which was described by Former President Benigno Aquino III as "a failed experiment".
Ahod Balawag Ebrahim, better known as Al-hajj Murad Ebrahim, is a Moro Filipino politician and former rebel leader currently serving as the first chief minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
The Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), also known as the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement, is an Islamist militant organization based in Mindanao, the Philippines. It follows the Wahhabi ideology that is currently being spread by Wahhabi preachers in the country. It is a smaller player in the overall Moro insurgency in the Philippines and is mostly active in Maguindanao and other places in central Mindanao. It is a breakaway group from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front founded by Ameril Umbra Kato. Following Kato's death, the group split into three factions, one of which has aligned with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), while the other two are less radical.
The Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro (CAB) is a final peace agreement signed between the Government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front on March 27, 2014 at the Malacañang Palace in Manila. Under the agreement, the Islamic separatists would turn over their firearms to a third party, which would be selected by the rebels and the Philippine government. The MILF agreed to decommission its armed wing, the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF). In return, the government would establish an autonomous Bangsamoro. Power sharing was a central point to the autonomy redesign.
The Mamasapano clash was a shootout that took place during a police operation by the Special Action Force (SAF) of the Philippine National Police (PNP) on January 25, 2015, in Tukanalipao, Mamasapano, then-undivided Maguindanao. The operation, codenamed Oplan Exodus, was intended to capture or kill wanted Malaysian terrorist and bomb-maker Zulkifli Abdhir and other Malaysian terrorists or high-ranking members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
The Bangsamoro Organic Law, also known as the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), and officially designated as Republic Act No. 11054, is a Philippine law that provided for the establishment of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
An autonomous region of the Philippines is a first-level administrative division that has the authority to control a region's culture and economy. The Constitution of the Philippines allows for two autonomous regions: in the Cordilleras and in Muslim Mindanao. Currently, Bangsamoro, which largely consists of the Muslim-majority areas of Mindanao, is the only autonomous region in the country.
Mohagher Iqbal is the nom de guerre of the member of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front who serves as chair of the group's peace panel.
The Jeddah Accord was signed on January 3–4, 1987 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia by Aquilino Pimentel Jr., representing the Government of the Philippines and Nur Misuari of the Moro National Liberation Front. The two panels agreed upon the continued discussion of the proposal of the grant of full autonomy to Mindanao, Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi and Palawan subject to democratic processes.
The 1996 Final Peace Agreement, also called the Jakarta Accord was signed on September 2, 1996 in Manila, Philippines by Manuel Yan, representing the Government of the Philippines and Nur Misuari of the Moro National Liberation Front. The culmination of four years of peace talks, the agreement established mechanisms designed to bring about the full implementation of the 1976 Tripoli Agreement.
Hajji Salik B. Abu more commonly known as Ghazali Jaafar was a Filipino militant and government official. He fought under the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). He served as chairman of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC), and the Speaker of the Parliament designate under the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA), the interim regional government of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
The Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) was a proposed subdivision in the Philippines spanning portions of Mindanao and Palawan. Conceptualized during the peace talks between the government of the Philippines during the administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the BJE was the proposed expanded successor to the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
On November 8, 2022, the Philippine Army and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) engaged in a gunfight in Ungkaya Pukan, Basilan, while the army was conducting clearing operations on "lawless elements" allegedly taking refuge in the territory controlled by the MILF. Fighting between the two sides continued until November 10, 2022 when a ceasefire between two sides were signed.