Keywords

“The peace negotiations and ceasefire [between the Government of the Philippines (GPH) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) ] allowed communities in Mindanao to dream of peace and development”, observed Haneefa Macapado, a young woman speaking for Muslim youth at a forum at the University of the Philippines (Macapado, 2015). Before the peace talks and since the 1970s, more than 120,000 people were killed in the separatist war (Wadi in Lontoc, 2006). The ceasefire has been in place since 1997 and the latest peace process commenced in 2001 to address one of Asia’s longest conflicts. As the GPH races to conclude the peace process during the term of the Aquino administration, remarkable progress has been made in the last 3 years compared to the preceding decade of negotiations. The Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) was drafted and published in 2013. If enacted, a Bangsamoro government will rise where the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Footnote 1 stood. The Bangsamoro ministerial government will prioritise development in the resource-rich but poorest region of the Philippines . To this end, the Bangsamoro Development Plan (BDP) was an initiative drafted by the MILF’s Bangsamoro Development Agency (BDA) in anticipation of the passage of the BBL and was published online in May 2015. As the peace talks and the BBL hang in the balance, the contents of the BDP identify what is at stake for women and men in building the Bangsamoro Government.

This chapter reviews gender roles in Moro history, women’s participation in peace processes, and gender equity as an agenda in peace negotiations . My purpose is to illustrate that critical attention to gender contributes to an effective peace and development policy. I refer to gender as the social construction of the sexes, as it is commonly understood (Baden & Goetz, 1998; Sardenberg, 2007), but with awareness that my approach to gender is as a relational category, opting for “dynamic and historically situated notions of masculinity and femininity and an emphasis on power relations” (Costa, 1994 in Sardenberg, 2007, p. 55). I therefore foreground the conflict in Southern Philippines by considering the sources of conflict and gender constructs reflected in the history of the Bangsamoro people from the twelfth century to present. I then review women’s participation and incorporation of gender as an agenda in peace negotiations in Southeast Asia to situate the BDP within peace efforts in the region. Moving to consider the current peace process between the MILF and GPH, I examine how gender is framed in the language and content of the BDP.

The main method used in chapter is a critical discourse analysis that traces the logic of text. After reviewing the entirety of the BDP, I studied the way the word “gender” is used each time it appears in the body (Vision, Chapters 1–15) of the 216-page document available from the Bangsamoro Development Agency website. I perform a critical frame analysis, following Ron Schmidt Sr., to visibilise how gender has been framed in the text. In my discussion, I look at BDP’s “gender” discourse in the “(re)production and challenge of dominance” (Van Dijk, 1993, p. 249) in the properties of the text and its local meanings. I underscore the power of words in producing meanings and action and highlight underlying conflicts that should be addressed for long-term peace. Discourse analysis affords a qualitative exploration of gender in this particular piece of policy and allows for a thoughtful review of the language of the plan in relation to wider contexts; in fact, the meanings emerge only in relation to them (Fairclough, 1995).

Historical Injustices Against the Bangsamoro

The conflict in Mindanao is long and complex. In this section, I present a concise narrative focusing on the roles played by men and women in the making of the Bangsamoro nation. I do this to draw out the gender order in the Bangsamoro history and illustrate how gendered social relations construct the conflict. I revisit these roles later in my analysis.

Male merchant Arabs and migrant settlers shared Islam to indigenous people in Mindanao since the twelfth century (Abubakar, 1983). The Sultanates of Mindanao were led by men portrayed as charismatic heroes who were able to unite Muslim indigenous people under their rule since the fifteenth century (Majul, 1999). The different sultanates and ethnic organisations made “a constellation of royal houses which had unreconciled claims to legitimacy and historicity” (Tan, 1987, p. 44) the root of ridos or clan wars. In this situation, a larger clan would be deemed more formidable in force, and thus women’s fertility is highly valued. Patriarchs protect their families by launching offensives and counter-offensives against rival clans. The clans who are successful in doing so are deemed stronger and thus deter rival attacks, headed by clan heroes that provide and protect.

When the Spanish colonised the islands in the sixteenth century, they found the Muslim men resistant to the occupation, referred to them as Moros,Footnote 2 and depicted them as an enemy. As they were losing the war against Filipino revolutionaries, Spain sold the Philippine Islands, including Mindanao, to the United States by way of the Treaty of Paris in 1898. After the Philippine-American War, Moro men were systematically marginalised by land and power dispossessionFootnote 3. For instance, the U.S. claimed indigenous lands in Mindanao for settlement by non-Moro inhabitants, drastically shifting the demographic population in the Philippine’s second largest island. By the late 1960s, the political influence of the Sultans weakened and social unrest had intensified (Dwyer & Cagoco-Guiam, 2012).

The human rights violations committed by the Philippine government, such as the Jabidah massacreFootnote 4 in 1968, fired the establishment of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in 1969. The MNLF declared an aspiration for an egalitarian Bangsamoro Republic, separate from the Republic of the Philippines . In the assertion of self-determination of Muslims in Mindanao, the pejorative Moro became a distinction and a positive source of pride. The disempowered Moro men who lost lands and positions of power in the public sphere found a new purpose in armed social movements.

To control civilian unrest, then President Ferdinand Marcos formed in the 1970s the Civilian Home Defense Force (CHDF) and supported the Christian militia ILAGA (Ilonggo Land Grabbers’ Association), which claimed to defend Christians from attacks perpetrated by Muslims, but in reality grabbed land by force and killings (Macasalong, 2013). Terror was built by attacks on mosques, such as the Malisbong massacreFootnote 5 in 1974. However, the people’s resistance against Martial Law only grew. By 1976, the GPH and the all-male MNLF panel signed the Tripoli Agreement, signaling peace talks under the framework of autonomy. Following the peace deal, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) fighters broke away to pursue the separatism that was abandoned by the MNLF.

By way of the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Joint Military Training signed in 1999, the United States military forces were involved in the Philippine government’s all-out war policy in Mindanao in 2000. After 9/11, the MILF was linked to Jemaah Islamiyah and Al-Qaeda groups, allegedly the rationale for the continuing U.S. presence in Mindanao. In the war waged by the GPH and the U.S. in Mindanao, Muslim men are depicted as enemies, and women and children are made invisible. Thus, bombings and indiscriminate strafing have been forms of attack by the militarily powerful states of the Philippines and the U.S. working together against the insurgency in Marcos’ martial law, Estrada’s all-out-war, and Aquino’s all-out-offensive policies.

The ARMM, inaugurated in 1990 as a result of negotiations with the MNLF, was described as “a failed experiment” two decades later by President Benigno Aquino III. The MILF maintains a stronghold in ARMM. Its leadership, in 2010, abandoned the separatism for an independent federal state-like autonomy of the Bangsamoro. Some grassroots MILF fighters view the collaboration as a self-defeating compromise and have supported the new militant Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) instead. The agreements between the GPH and the MILF further sparked renewed vigor from a faction of the MNLF that led a siegeFootnote 6 in Zamboanga in 2013. Known actors in the MNLF, MILF, BIFF, and ASG are male. Except when they emerge as victims, women are usually unseen in the narrative of the Bangsamoro.

Despite the ongoing peace negotiations and a ceasefire order, the Special Action Force (SAF) of the Philippine National Police (PNP) performed operation “Oplan Exodus” in Mamasapano, Maguindanao—an MILF-controlled territory—on 25 January 2015 without coordinating with the MILF nor the Armed Forces of the Philippines . The result was 67 deaths; of these 44 were SAF men, 18 MILF men, and 5 civilians. In mainstream and alternative media sources, the widows of the SAF and the MILF fighters clamored for justice (see Kilab Multimedia, 2015). The clash in Mamasapano revealed critical aspects of the conflict in Mindanao and changed the pace and course of the peace process.

The brief historical account presented here shows emerging sources of conflict brought about by systematic land grabbing, lack of social services, and human rights violations in the form of militarisation and massacres. The war that is being waged by liberation movements in Mindanao seems to aspire for redress of the historical injustice against Muslims in the Philippines (see Jubair, 1999). Against this backdrop, I sketched the gender order in which males have taken on public roles and women the private. The expensive military solutions that the government has adopted have not solved the conflict because they failed to address the inequality and injustice. The peace processes that the GPH initiated seemed to be a more fruitful endeavour towards peace in Mindanao, a direction consistent with the long-term vision to satisfy human needs, advocated by peace psychologists (Christie, Tint, Wagner, & Winter, 2008).

Women in Southeast Asian Peace Talks

A new and affirmative aspect in the current talks between the MILF and the GPH is the participation of women. Women are actively being brought on board as negotiators and consultants. Most notably, the GPH panel is chaired by a woman and has had women members since 2004, while the MILF recently appointed two Moro women to its Board of Consultants and Technical Working Group (Pahm, 2013). Before presenting and analysing the gender content of the BDP, I briefly situate the BDP within peace efforts that are involving women in Southeast Asia.

The low participation of women in peace negotiations relates to the marginal position of women in most societies. Only four percent of signatories to major peace agreements worldwide from 1992 to 2011 have been women, and no woman was chief negotiator in UN-brokered talks (UN Women, 2012). For instance, no woman participated in the 2007 peace meeting between the MILF predecessor, Moro National Liberation Front, and the GPH. Notably, the 2011 negotiations between the leftist National Democratic Front of the Philippines and the GPH represent a stand-out high point of 33 % women signatories and 35 % women negotiators.

A force that affirms the necessary participation of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts is the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) on women, peace, and security. The resolution urges all parties to take measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, particularly rape and other forms of sexual abuse in conflict situations. As an agenda, increased women’s participation is common in peace negotiations in Southeast Asia, lobbied by women’s organisations and international bodies. The theory has been that women’s presence in processes of negotiating would lead to more substance in the discussion of gender-related issues (UN Women, 2012). Two examples of expanding women’s roles in peace are in the peace talks between Aceh separatists and the Indonesian government, and the ongoing peace process in Myanmar.

The peace talks between Aceh separatist movement and the Indonesian government was initially all male. In 2004, the Free Aceh Movement enjoined Shadia Marhaban to participate on their panel of five. The 2005 talks in Helsinki were largely considered a success, but having a woman in the panel did not translate into having a gender perspective in the negotiations (UN Women, 2012). The lone woman at the negotiating table in hindsight reflected that she was unaware of Resolution 1325 and missed the relevance of including gender issues in the peace process. “In order to secure signature to an agreement, reputable international organizations, the European Union (EU) —as the guarantor of the Helsinki MoU—and even the UN itself opted to side-line women’s issues within the process”, wrote Marhaban (2012, p. 20).

The role of women was also not on the agenda in the peace processes under the military regime in Myanmar. A significant feature of the current peace process is the inclusion of a few women from armed groups at the peace table and the more public nature of the peace process (Lahtaw & Raw, 2012, p. 7). In addition, women observers have been given access to the negotiations. The new space for women has made civil society actors in Myanmar hopeful that this space can be expanded as the peace process develops. However, content-wise, a 2012 opinion survey among women in top- and mid-level positions in Myanmar’s civil society organisations indicates that attention to gender was negligible in previous peace processes (Lahtaw & Raw, 2012). Thus far, military offensives persist in ethnic conflict areas, even as the government talks peace, with rape and sexual assault continuing to be used as tools of war (see KWAT, 2013). Since 2010, the Women’s League of Burma has documented 100 cases of sexual violence, including 47 gang rapes perpetrated by Burmese military in ethnic regions (Women’s League of Burma, 2014). Furthermore, the government refuses to address the violence against Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine State, which has displaced thousands and killed hundreds (Council on Foreign Relations, 2015), and encouraged human trafficking.

Increased participation of women in Southeast Asian peace negotiations is expected to bring more attention to gender. However, the Aceh example shows that the attention to gender may not naturally follow women’s participation. The Myanmar experience , on the other hand, suggests that women’s participation in the peace negotiations does not preclude the continuation of state-perpetuated gender-based violence. Thus, while the region has shown great interest in involving women in the peace process, placing gender justice on the peace agenda remains an ongoing challenge.

Gender and Development in the BDP

To examine the quality of peace envisioned in the Bangsamoro, I turn to the May 2015 BDP Integrative Report prepared by the Bangsamoro Development Authority (BDA) , the development arm of the MILF, in consultation with stakeholders and government and non-government partners.Footnote 7 In this section, I present the text of the BDP as my primary data. I first describe the basic content of the BDP and then present my discourse analysis of how gender is used in the body of the development agenda.

The BDP is a blueprint for development in the Bangsamoro region, the means and an end of the Bangsamoro autonomy. The plan provides vision, strategy, and recommendations in the short (2015–2016) and medium (2016-beyond) terms . The Integrative Report is a 216-page document, with 15 chapters and seven annexes. The early chapters explain the background and analysis of the conflict in the Bangsamoro, the plan methodology and development framework, and the current situation and opportunities. The later chapter focuses on recommendations for each priority sector.

Acknowledging that the conflict in the Bangsamoro is rooted in complex security, justice, and economic drivers, the BDP moves away from the “business as usual” approach in development planning. It recognises that “enduring peace and stability can be attained through just, inclusive, equitable and highly tangible socioeconomic rehabilitation, reconstruction, and development” (BDA, 2015, p. xv). The Peacebuilding and Sustainable Human Development Framework adopted for the BDP is based on the principles of stakeholder inclusion and consideration for the drivers of conflict (see Abubakar, 2013). The plan specifically promises to ensure local participation and the delivery of basic services, two duties that are not adequately met by the current government. The BDP has identified six thematic areas for developmental projects and sectoral recommendations: economy and livelihood, infrastructure, social services, environment and natural resources, culture and identity, and governance and justice as relating to goals of normalisation and development. The plan recognises that gender cuts across these themes, along with the issues of youth and peacebuilding (BDA, 2015, p. 3).

In my analysis, I test the logic of the BDP’s use of “gender” and adopt a critical frame analysis, following Ron Schmidt’s lead (2015). To investigate the document (see Table 11.1), I first reviewed the entire BDP and then focused on those parts that talk about gender. Column one therefore lists sentences from the body of the BDP (Vision, Chapters 1–15) original text that contain the word “gender”. The second step was to consider the local context (location in the document) and properties of the text (presence and absence of crucial elements, wording, metaphors, and other devices used, if any). The second column therefore notes where the sentence is situated within the BDP and provides comments on the text properties. The third step was to bring out the logic of the text in relation to its role in the development agenda of the BDP. The third column therefore identifies the underlying assumptions and arguments that the text puts forward. The fourth step was to bring the text (column 1) in conversation with wider contexts that impede the development of the Bangsamoro. In the fourth column, I therefore pose counter-arguments that test the logic of the original text, to show how gender as used in the BDP could benefit from critical attention to meet the development goals of the Bangsamoro. Finally, based on all preceding columns, I identified the emergent “gender” framing in the last column. Framing comes from the words considered in local and wider contexts, but also produces ideologies and discourses.

Table 11.1 Gender in the BDP (2015)
Full size table

The gender frames in the last column of the table are gender-equals-women (5), gender-equals-sex (2), and gender-as-social positions (2). In three cases, no particular frame emerges, since there is not enough information to draw upon any substantive conclusion. On the one hand, the BDP uses gender interchangeably with sex, and on the other, to refer to social positions. The dominant frame, however, is its reference to gender as synonymous to women. Following Schmidt, I extracted the dominant gender frame identified and consider their strengths and weaknesses in the discussion that follows. The counter-arguments I posed in the fourth column further animate my analysis in the next section.

Developing a Gender Framework

The dominant narrative on gender employed in the BDP is that “women” equals “gender” or “gender” is synonymous with “women”. Most of the gender sensitivity measures presented in the Plan, when concretised, relate to women. The strength of this formulation is in the recognition that women are marginalised in the Bangsamoro and is the first step in challenging gender inequality. In this light, the BDP is progressive in many ways, certainly in its vision of enjoining women to participate in the building of the Bangsamoro. The flaws in this formulation are, however, significant. Firstly, it excludes other genders (Table 11.1, 8C; 11C). In adding women into the development agenda, it presumes that this satisfactorily covers concerns on gender. Gender is a social construction of the sexes, whereas “women” is but a category of gender (Sardenberg, 2007); thus, “women” does not capture the entirety of gendered lives. Gender goes beyond the genitalia and should include non-heteronormative genders in the Bangsamoro. Secondly, it universalises Bangsamoro women’s experience, as if all women experience the same level of marginalisation and discrimination. In the same manner, there is an implicit assumption that men are invincible. Lastly, it fails to criticise the historical patriarchal arrangements in the Bangsamoro. In this section, I will discuss the last two points in more detail, revisiting the gender order I have sketched in the Moro history and counter-arguments I have proffered in the table above to show why an improved framing of gender in the BDP is necessary to meet its goals of sustainable peace and development.

Why use “gender”, when the BDP means “women”? “Gender” has been appropriated by mainstream aid institutions and good governance discourses to the point of paying lip service (Elson, 1995). Top-down, externally imposed gender mainstreaming (Mukhopadhyay, 2007) reduces gender and development to a legitimate technical fix. In short, the term has been hijacked by institutions in ways that forward their different agendas without justice as an objective (see Cornwall, Harrison, & Whitehead, 2007). The BDP (see Table 11.1, 2C1; 5C1; 15C2) seems to have fallen in what a Filipino radical feminist organisation, Makibaka, warned as a “gender trap” (Baden & Goetz, 1998). This could explain why the BDP does not define gender-impacts clearly and uses gender interchangeably with women.

Differentiating Experiences of Women and Men

The framing of women-equals-gender universalises women and overlooks class divisions in society that differentiates their level of marginalisation and discrimination. The universalisation is reminiscent of the women in development (WID) approach of the 1970s that focuses on women’s access to economic development and argues for integration (Boserup, 1970) and political involvement. Building on these gains, the gender and development (GAD) approach reflects the goal of gender equality, as addressed by the women’s movement in the 1980s (Baden & Goetz, 1998). While underscoring women’s potential contribution to the labor force (Table 11.1, 3B2; 9B), the BDP formulation appears to construct “gender”, as was fashionable in mainstream international institutions of the 1990s, with an emphasis on gender awareness but without an emancipatory aim (Table 11.1, 13C2).

In a patriarchal society such as the Bangsamoro, women and girls are likely to be abused more than men and boys. However, poor young men are also at great risk in conflicts organised by elites, including clan wars (Table 11.1, 8C). In wars abroad, male combatants have been documented to be vulnerable in the hands of adversaries and are also victims of sexual violence (Zarkov, 2007). When the BDP says that interventions must be crafted with a gendered and peacebuilding lens, it necessitates an understanding of class, ethnicity, and gender to socially locate women, girls, men, and boys in a web of power relations. While there is a need to be vigilant that “gender” is not used as a backdoor to locate men front and centre, “gender” makes visible the relationship between people of varying identities and sexualities and the shared responsibility of creating an equitable world.

Patriarchy as Structural Violence

A crucial element that is missing in the women-equal-gender framework is to identify and criticise an established patriarchal order in the formal and informal institutions within the Bangsamoro (Table 11.1, 13C2). Gender inequality in the Bangsamoro prevents marginalised women and men from developing themselves and contributing to the development of their communities. Peace researcher Johan Galtung described conflict in seemingly peaceful situations as structural violence (Galtung, 1969). While direct violence harms or kills people swiftly, structural violence is a chronic harming or killing slowly, through normalised social arrangements that privilege a group and deprive the basic needs of another. Gender inequality can be seen as a form of structural violence that is a consequence of the normalised gender order in societies that privileges men in history. In Mindanao, this means that conflict can exist after direct violence has ceased.

Understanding the operation of a patriarchal arrangement in the Bangsamoro history helps define what roles men can take and avoids the trap of affording absolute symmetry in support and protection between sexes based on “impartiality ”. In the historical background I presented to foreground the conflict in the Bangsamoro, war has been shaped by the roles men took to defend themselves, their families, and communities. The gender order that shaped the conflict needs subversion to build peace. Stereotypes such as that household issues concern women and public issues concern men must obviously be avoided and men must be allowed to take on various roles in peacebuilding. As new roles are being cast for men to contribute to peace, the hero role men play in the narrative of war espoused by the MILF needs to be thoughtfully considered as should their lead in clan wars. The notion that women need to be saved follows suit, as this misses the opportunity to make women active partners in peacebuilding (Table 11.1, 12C). The changes in roles change the story. Since narratives aid in mobilisation through identification and production of a community (Fine, 1995), these narratives could be revised towards directions such as equality and justice. Other narratives are possible (Bergeron, 2004) in circumstances where the Moro people determine their unique peaceful future.

Galtung (1975) suggests that peacebuilding as a peace activity is a proactive attempt aimed at healing and reducing structural violence in an effort to prevent conflict in the future. Galtung (1985) and Wagner (1988) refer to the promotion of equitable social arrangements as positive peace. Seen in this light, addressing the gender gap in the DBP is a crucial part of peacebuilding in the Bangsamoro and an investment towards a more stable peace. The benefit of a holistic peace agenda that considers gender in its entirety is that it becomes a vehicle for the social change that is needed to keep peace. This is a difficult but worthy project because it requires a change in the dominant culture. For instance, the vision of equality and justice espoused by the BDP entails the transformation of religious and public institutions to dismantle patriarchy. Peace in this sense is not only an absence of war, but works towards an absence of conflict through cooperation.

Words, Frames , Ideologies, and Discourses

Words do matter, especially in power-laden documents such as plans and policies. Ferree and Merrill observe that, “language often carries masculinist assumptions and normative judgments that pass as neutral concepts” (2004, p. 247). Let us take as illustration the BDP’s first core value of vicegerency, elucidated as the following:

Man, according to the teachings of Islam, is the representative and vicegerent of Almighty Allah on Earth. This world is a trust and man is its trustee. Prophet Mohammad (peace be with him) also said: “All of you are shepherds and all of you are responsible for your herds: The leader is a shepherd and is responsible for his subjects (BDA, 2015, p. 13).

The original Quranic texts from which the BDP quotes refer to vicegerents as humans, men and women. As a core value that informs all interventions, vicegerency could have been described in a gender-neutral formulation (“all”, “each person”) used in expounding other core values. Instead, the translation of the original excerpt contains a discourse on gender that is presented as normal, yet enacts and reproduces male dominance as it influences minds (Van Dijk, 1993). What is interesting is that vicegerency does not appear in an earlier draft of the BDP. In the drafting process, the BDA consulted a variety of stakeholders, including feminist scholars and advocate groups, and the progression of its versions demonstrates an ongoing struggle within the MILF. This dynamism is crucial, but what emerges in the final policy underscores the dominant narrative in the BDP.

Words can be viewed as frames in which ideologies and discourses are manifested and themselves produce ideologies and discourses. Gender discourses comprise debates on privilege and difference and are fundamentally political (Ferree & Merrill, 2004) discourses relating to the use and distribution of power and its underlying values and mobilisations. The language of a development plan such as the BDP is crucial in that it shows speech acts that reflect wider attitudes forged in the peace process. In a policy, language can be observed as “thinking in operation”, and a force that will translate into action, and thus has methodological implication (Billig, 1995). In the same light, carefully crafting concepts used in a peace agenda can help foster conditions that attract peace. Naturally, gender should figure not only on the level of language, but in the content of the peace process. For example, when the BDP says that the promotion of gender-responsive health approaches is in the first phase of the plan, it should engage men in reproductive health programmes. Learning from criticisms of the international family planning programme, interventions should take gender relations into account to enhance women’s status and involve men in equal and supportive domestic partnerships (Greene, 2000).

In this section, I illustrated that gender, as framed in the BDP as synonymous to women, has shortcomings that need to be addressed in order to build sustainable peace and development in the Bangsamoro. Framing gender more broadly and critically is crucial in formulating policies that address the social inequalities that perpetuate conflict. In the absence hereof, we may reinforce old problems of male privilege or marginalise the queer identities in the Bangsamoro. The language and content of the BDP is important because it determines what is at stake for the Bangsamoro people in their struggle for autonomy.

Peace in Gender Justice

Gender and power actively construct the history of the Bangsamoro. Recognising the legitimate claims of the Moro people, peace processes have been embarked upon, the latest of which is the current negotiations between the MILF and the GPH. I presented in this chapter the gender content of the BDP, which aims to address sources of conflict in the Bangsamoro through an autonomous Bangsamoro government. Like the Free Aceh Movement, the MILF has broken ground with the inclusion of women in the peace panels. Unlike the Free Aceh Movement and Government of Indonesia peace talks, aspects of Resolution 1325 have been woven into the agenda of the negotiations. However, having women participate at the negotiating tables is one aspect and having gender on the agenda is another. A former member of the GPH panel negotiating with the MILF observed, “Although there are many women active in the peace movement, many of them are reluctant to advocate gender issues” (Santiago, 2011, p. 31). Muslim secular feminism that advocates for gender equity and Islamic feminism that raises the issue of equality in private and public spaces are already stirring debates in Mindanao (Brecht-Drouart, 2015). Just as activists in Myanmar are concerned with the shaping of their peace process, women and men in vibrant civil society in the Philippines could define the gender discourse in the BDP in both invited and invented spaces.

The framing of gender in the BDP is crucial because “gender” has been used as a technical fix in development agendas. As already indicated, through discourse analysis, I found that gender is used in a way that it is synonymous with women. If women’s issues are assumed to be the only gender issues, then the BDP fails to appreciate how gender operates. Empowering Moro women is an important step towards gender equity, but it would be presumptuous to assume that women will always speak for all genders, and on all aspects of gender-based oppression.

Understanding that women and men experience conflict differently because of the gender roles and opportunities afforded them, deeper research on Moro women’s and men’s various experiences of conflict would benefit the peace policies of the BDA. The universalisation of the experiences of women is not just misleading, but also spells failure for policies. The differences of experience among women and men show a large variety within a specific group. With equity in mind, gender is rewardingly considered in relation to power lines such as class, and where relevant, like in Mindanao, ethnicity, generation, and geographic location. Recognising the diversity of the Moro people requires policies to be closer to reality in order to be effective. In the end, it is the quality of the discourse on gender that will make a difference to the lives of everyday women and men after the conflict.

Taking up gender in the BDP is an opportunity to commit to gender justice; that is, if gender is used in the BDP, it should do gender some justice. In its current formulation, the BDP does not do so in its silence on the patriarchal arrangements within the Bangsamoro. Peace psychology researchers prescribe contribution towards positive peace in the form of equitable social relations, including gender relations. There is no shortcut; painstaking changes in power relations are requisite. Addressing structural violence in the form of social and gender justice builds and keeps the peace. How this central issue can be practically addressed in peace negotiations and post-conflict development must be subject of future research.

While the BDP talks equality, justice, and peace, its commitment to gender equality is not yet reflected in the current language and content of the plan. Disadvantaged women and men will continue to suffer from structural violence within the Bangsamoro if a careful, gender-inclusive, anti-patriarchal perspective is missing in the BDP. In this chapter, I underscored the relevance of women’s participation in peace processes and critically framing gender on peace agendas. Attending to the quality of gender discourse by (re)politicising “gender” to bring back its emancipatory aim, in addition to the increased participation of women in peace and development programmes, is an aspect of a sustainable peace.