The books

2024Free to read

Abhoud Syed M. Lingga

Institute of Bangsamoro Studies

Writings by the founder of the Institute of Bangsamoro Studies on the Bangsamoro’s road to self-determination: its history, the law and politics of the peace process, and what it means for peacebuilding elsewhere. Published for the 10th anniversary of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro.

2024Free to read

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

A survey report on the voters of the BARMM ahead of its first regional parliamentary elections. It profiles likely voters, how ready they are for the polls, where they get news of political parties, and the issues that drive their choices.

2023Free to read

Benedicto R. Bacani, Norma Tillo-Gomez, Ofelia Durante and others

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

An assessment of how the national plan against violent extremism is being carried out in the 5 provinces of the BARMM. It draws on interviews with 50 officials, 10 focus groups with 78 community leaders and a survey of 150 programme beneficiaries.

2020In print

Miriam Coronel-Ferrer

ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute

How the Moro and Cordillera movements each made a homeland out of a region, and adapted their claims to the state they fought, compared.

2020Free to read

Starjoan Villanueva

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

A study of how civil society organisations take part in politics and governance in the new BARMM during the transition period. It takes stock of what civil society has gained, the obstacles it faces in dealing with leaders and institutions, and where it can do more.

2019Out of print

Macapado A. Muslim

Saniata Publications

A reading of the Bangsamoro Organic Law and the government it creates, by a former president of Mindanao State University.

2019Free to read

eds. Liezl PG. Bugtay, Nikki Philline C. de la Rosa and Judy T. Gulane

International Alert

The 2019 Conflict Alert report on the fall in violent incidents in Muslim Mindanao after the Marawi war, even as extremist violence continued. Its title borrows Charles Tilly's line that war makes states, as the BARMM was being set up.

2018Free to read

Congress of the Philippines

Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines

The law, signed on 26 July 2018 and ratified in January 2019, that created the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and its parliamentary government. Free to read at the Lawphil Project.

2018Free to read

Salah Jubair (Mohagher Iqbal)

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

The speeches of the MILF’s chief negotiator from 2005 to 2018, which follow the peace process with the government through the eyes of the Front.

2016In print

ed. Paul D. Hutchcroft

Anvil Publishing

Scholars on the peace process as it stood after the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro: the deal, the economy, the clans, the law, and what would be needed to make the Bangsamoro work.

2014In print

Francisco J. Lara Jr.

Ateneo de Manila University Press

Why the conflict keeps returning: the clans, the rebel fronts and the state as rival sources of authority in Muslim Mindanao, and the shadow economy that sustains all three.

2013Free to read

Edna E. A. Co

UP National College of Public Administration and Governance

An assessment of how democracy works, and does not, in the ARMM’s provinces and towns, by the University of the Philippines’ public administration college with International IDEA and the Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy.

2013Out of print

ed. Benedicto R. Bacani

Institute for Autonomy and Governance

A 326-page collection published a year after the 2012 Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro, on the move from the ARMM to a new Bangsamoro political entity. Edited by IAG founder Benedicto Bacani, with contributions including Peter Koeppinger, Crisanto Cayon and Kathleen Geslani.

2013Out of print

Galing Pook Foundation

Galing Pook Foundation

8 case stories of good local governance from towns and provinces of the ARMM. It aims to counter the region's image as a place of failed government.

2012Out of print

Michael O. Mastura

Research and Education for Peace, Universiti Sains Malaysia

The government–MILF talks from February 1997 to June 2010, told by a Maguindanaon historian and lawyer who sat on the Front’s peace panel.

2012In print

Tom Stern

Anvil Publishing

The life of the founder of the Moro National Liberation Front, from Jolo and the University of the Philippines to Tripoli, Jeddah and the ARMM governorship, written with his cooperation.

2011Out of print

Lualhati M. Abreu

Center for People Empowerment in Governance

The Bangsamoro struggle explained in Filipino for a national readership, from the sultanates to the MILF talks.

2011Out of print

Soliman M. Santos Jr.

Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao

Essays by a peace advocate and lawyer defending the 2008 Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain, which the Supreme Court struck down. They also propose ways forward for the GRP–MILF talks after its collapse.

2011Out of print

Patricio P. Diaz

MindaNews

A long account of the talks between the government and the MILF, by a veteran Cotabato journalist who followed them from the start.

2010In print

Patricio N. Abinales

Ateneo de Manila University Press

Essays questioning the received story of the Moro struggle, the unbroken resistance from Spain to the present, and asking what the record shows instead.

2009Out of print

Shamsuddin L. Taya

Penerbit Universiti Utara Malaysia

How the MILF fought and negotiated, read as strategy, by a Malaysian political scientist.

2009Out of print

Magbassa Kita Foundation

Magbassa Kita Foundation

A collection responding to the 2008 Supreme Court decision that struck down the GRP–MILF Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain. It gathers dissenting views on the ruling and what it meant for the peace process.

2008Out of print

ed. Bobby M. Tuazon

Center for People Empowerment in Governance

Essays by Moro and Filipino scholars on the Bangsamoro’s history, the right to self-determination and the peace talks, from the Center for People Empowerment in Governance.

2008Out of print

Somsri Hananuntasuk and Ichal Supriadi

Asian Network for Free Elections

The report of an international team that observed the August 2008 ARMM regional election. It records how the vote was run and the problems observers found.

2007Out of print

eds. Peter Kreuzer and Rainer Werning

Strategic Information and Research Development Centre

Essays by people inside the conflict and those who study it, Moro scholars, MILF writers and foreign observers among them, gathered by two German researchers.

2005Free to read

Peter Kreuzer

Peace Research Institute Frankfurt

How the clans of Muslim Mindanao hold power through violence, and why the state lets them, in a report from the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. Free to read.

2004Free to read

Eric U. Gutierrez and Saturnino M. Borras Jr.

East-West Center

The argument that land, not religion, is at the root of the Moro conflict: how colonial and Philippine land policy dispossessed the Moros and why the peace deals have not touched it. Free to read.

2004Out of print

Benedicto R. Bacani

Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Philippines

A study of why Muslim autonomy in the southern Philippines has stayed largely 'on paper', and what real self-rule for the ARMM would require. It includes the text of the 1976 Tripoli Agreement.

2003Out of print

Amina Rasul-Bernardo

Asian Institute of Management

Moro voices on the conflict and what peace would take, gathered for the Asian Institute of Management by a Tausug former cabinet member.

2002In print

Moshe Yegar

Lexington Books

The Moros set beside the Malays of Patani and the Rohingya of Arakan: three Muslim minorities on the edges of Buddhist and Christian states, and the roads each took.

2001In print

Soliman M. Santos Jr.

University of the Philippines Press

Whether the Philippine Constitution can accommodate the Moro demand for self-rule, and what would have to change, by a human rights lawyer who worked the peace process for years.

2001Out of print

Salamat Hashim

Moro Islamic Liberation Front

Writings by the founding chairman of the MILF on the Bangsamoro struggle against oppression and colonial rule. It sets out the MILF's case for Bangsamoro self-determination.

2000In print

Patricio N. Abinales

Ateneo de Manila University Press

How Cotabato and Davao were drawn into the Philippine state in the first half of the twentieth century, through the datus and settler elites who learned to work it, and what that made of Mindanao politics.

2000Out of print

Marites Dañguilan Vitug and Glenda M. Gloria

Ateneo Center for Social Policy and Public Affairs

Two journalists’ investigation of the MILF, the MNLF, the Abu Sayyaf and the Mindanao war at the turn of the century, from the camps and the back channels. The book most reporters on the region started with.

2000Out of print

eds. Eric U. Gutierrez, Kristina Gaerlan and Mara Stankovitch

Institute for Popular Democracy

A reader on the war in the South at the end of the 1990s: the rebel fronts, the clan armies and the religious leaders, with primary documents and the authors’ reporting.

2000Out of print

Eric S. Casiño

Notre Dame University

Mindanao’s three peoples and their politics as shaped by the land they hold, lowland, upland and coast, by a Filipino anthropologist.

1999Free to read

ed. Mara Stankovitch

Conciliation Resources

An issue of the Accord series on the negotiations between the Philippine government and the MNLF that led to the 1996 'Final Peace Agreement'. Published with MSU General Santos and Notre Dame University, it carries essays, interviews, profiles and the key texts of the agreements.

1998Free to read

Thomas M. McKenna

University of California Press

An anthropologist’s account, from years in Cotabato City, of how ordinary Maguindanaons lived the rebellion, the datus and the state, and why the separatist story and the everyday one do not match. Free to read in the University of California Press e-books collection.

1996Out of print

Arnold Molina Azurin

UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies

A Filipino anthropologist’s essays against the romance of rebellion, on the South and on war zones elsewhere.

1995Self-published

Nasser A. Marohomsalic

Published by the author

A history of the Moro peoples written from within, from the sultanates to the MNLF, by a Maranao lawyer; printed by the author and much cited in the region. Revised 2001.

1994Out of print

B. R. (Rudy) Rodil

Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao

How the Moro and Lumad peoples became minorities in their own homeland: the land laws, the resettlement programmes and the migration from Luzon and the Visayas, with the figures.

1994Out of print

Macapado A. Muslim

Mindanao State University

A Maranao political scientist’s case, made in the early 1990s, that autonomy won by politics could answer what the armed struggle had not.

1993Out of print

B. R. (Rudy) Rodil

Minority Rights Group

A short report for an international readership on the two peoples displaced by the settlement of Mindanao and the state of their claims in the early 1990s.

1993Out of print

Samuel K. Tan

UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies

How the Moro cause reached the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the Muslim world, and what the attention did to the movement at home. Revised 1995.

1991Out of print

Kenneth E. Bauzon

Ateneo de Manila University Press

How the liberal state and the Moro search for an Islamic political identity have failed to meet, by a Filipino political scientist.

1990Out of print

W. K. Che Man

Oxford University Press

The Moro and Patani Malay movements side by side: their histories, their organisations and what each state did about them, in the first full comparison of the two.

1989Out of print

Samuel K. Tan

University of the Philippines Press

What decolonisation meant for a people who did not see the republic as their own, and how a Filipino Muslim identity was argued over in the decades after independence.

1985Out of print

Cesar Adib Majul

Mizan Press

Majul’s short account of the Moro struggle of the 1970s and the rise of the Moro National Liberation Front, written for readers abroad.

1984Out of print

Salah Jubair (Mohagher Iqbal)

IQ Marin

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s own history of the Bangsamoro, from the sultanates through colonial rule to the MNLF and the MILF, written by its chief negotiator under a pen name. The third edition of 1999 is the one usually cited.

1984Out of print

Michael O. Mastura

Ministry of Muslim Affairs

Early essays by Mastura on Moro history, law and politics, from the years before he entered Congress.

1980Out of print

T. J. S. George

Oxford University Press

A journalist’s account of the Moro revolt of the 1970s, the MNLF and the Marcos government’s war, written as it happened.