DAVAO CITY – A peace monitor in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) said that the peace agreement between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is on the brink of collapse as trust is rapidly eroding between them.

In a statement released on Wednesday, Feb. 25, Conflict Climate Action (CCA) said that hope is under siege by alleged betrayals from both sides.

“In less than a year, the old conflict divide between State and non-State actors was upended by a serious divide within the MILF and the government,” said CCA, formerly known as International Alert.

CCA cited unresolved issues on decommissioning, normalization, and multiple postponements of the first parliamentary elections in the region as among the factors that led to instability.

Among the lingering issues that the peace monitor specifically pointed out is the normalization agreement, which has remained in a vegetative state for over a year.

It added that even the decommissioning of combatants and their weapons is effectively comatose after the MILF unilaterally suspended processing last year.

“While this demand merits serious attention from both parties, nowhere in the political settlement does it authorize a unilateral moratorium as a legitimate or acceptable response to this impasse. Embracing this logic resigns both parties to the very real prospect that no exit agreement will be reached within the next decade or more,” the CCA said.

The CCA cited the dismal normalization record and the utter failure of decommissioning, 10 years after the political settlement was signed and six years after the organic law was passed.

This snail-paced process, according to CCA, has allowed new and increasingly sophisticated weapons to flow into the Bangsamoro region.

It specifically cited the recent ambush of Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao del Sur Mayor Akmad Ampatuan. The CCA suggested that rocket-propelled grenades such as the ones used in the incident should have been among the first arms confiscated under the decommissioning process. “The brazenness of the midday attack was stunning; the weapon used, even more so.”

The CCA, along with Institute for Autonomy and Governance (IAG), expressed alarm last August over rising clashes between rival armed groups within the MILF and the resurgence and reemergence of violent extremism.

“We traced the rise in violence to the stalled decommissioning process, the large and growing number of illicit weapons in circulation, a political transition in gridlock, and the inability and unwillingness of both parties to acknowledge the structural and institutional flaws in the peace agreement and the fragile peace infrastructure bound to it,” it added.

The CCA cited that there is a perceptible slide towards yet another suspension of the Bangsamoro election, thinly disguised as concerns about electoral process and timing.

“Rather than fostering a legitimate and democratic mandate, a new impasse in the political transition is being engineered by those who wish to continue to reign without the right to rule,” the peace monitor stressed.

CCA emphasized that political legitimacy is not determined by the length of one's rule, but by popular choice at the outset. "Yet the State sacrificed this democratic imperative when it yielded to MILF demands to postpone parliamentary elections in 2022 and 2025.”

Congress has yet to pass another law allowing the holding of the first parliamentary elections in the region this year.

Amid these unresolved issues, the CCA suggested that urgent steps must be taken to restore trust among its stakeholders and rekindle hopes of meaningful change.

It added that the government and MILF should start with identifying and harnessing mediators who can speak the truth to both sides of the implementing panel and the heads of the multiple parties in the process. “The parties should also temper their language, stop finger pointing, and address issues head on, transparently and in good faith.”