A structure that leads to Moro and Muslim women in determining their own needs and defining their own rights, providing equitable spaces to be informed and participate in all decisions that affect them and their families.
The new BARMM offers a new beginning for the Moro women. Having been immersed in poverty and poorly performing quality of life indicators for the past decades, the promises of inclusive growth, rights-based governance, increasing peace, cultural sensitivity and visibility and participation in deciding on matters that affect them and their family are valued by these women. The consultation activity and interviews we held are founded on the premise that empowered Moro women will make a strong and cohesive BARMM.
The key issues raised by the women pertain to political participation, particularly awareness and influence on decisions on the allocation of government resources, stopping corruption among public officials and in government offices, protection from gender-based violence and women’s empowerment through capacity-building on their rights.
These consultation and interviews are only the first few of the initiatives to make the Bangsamoro parliament genuinely inclusive for women. As we progress with these initiatives and respond to their recommendations, we will be seeing more of how Moro women are claiming their rightful place and defining their own rights and participation in building the foundations of a peaceful and prosperous BARMM.
Every day, women perform multiple roles and multi-task, attending to the needs of the husband, nursing the infant, attending to the children and preparing them for school, attending to extra work or alternative sources of livelihood, finding food and/or looking for loans when the husband has no work or debilitated. Among the poorest, some women confess they are the last to eat during mealtime and the first to eat the leftovers. These same women sustain the community by caring for their sick relatives and the children whose parents leave for work overseas. Women are the invisible hands that prepare their husbands for work. They prepare food and clothes. They create homes and communities that are conducive to raising a family, producing citizens that develop that nation. For the United Nations, these same women can also be the support system for relatives who pursue violent extremism for either just or criminal causes.
The public consultations are built on the premise that women– as main ‘carers’ of the family, co-pillars in the community and equally capable public leaders– are one of the foundations of a strong and progressive Bangsamoro. Without the focus on the quality of life women, any society is doomed Following the establishment of the BTA, public consultations on women’s concerns were held to make the parliament – its legislative and programmatic mandates and initiatives – more inclusive and successful in bridging the transition from the old entity of ARMM into the new BARMM.
