Revisiting transitional justice and reconciliation
Cotabato City—Last week, I had the opportunity to share my experiences as part of the Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) with a small group of civil society group leaders in this city. The activity was part of a series of learning sessions organized by ForumZFD, a Germany-based international service agency that has supported peace processes in different parts of the world.
The one-and-a-half-day session, while not sufficient for taking in several issues raised as part of the learning activity, jump-started a renewed interest in pushing for transitional justice (TJ)—dealing with the past agenda.
This renewed interest and the initiatives to revisit the TJ and Reconciliation (TJR) agenda were prompted by a series of historic events in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). One of them was the passage of the Bangsamoro Transitional Justice and Reconciliation (BTJRC) Act by the members of the interim Bangsamoro Transition Authority just a few months before another landmark event—the first regular parliamentary elections in the region last Sept. 14, 2026.
TJR is at the core of a peace process that takes place after the guns of war have been silenced, with the promise of creating platforms for rendering justice to victims of past atrocities committed by state agents, and of ensuring institutional reforms in the security and governance sectors to guarantee no recurrence of past atrocities.
The TJR agenda has been left hanging for more than a decade after the reports we crafted through the TJRC were submitted to both the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front peace panels in 2016.
In 2017, former Rep. Kit Belmonte of Quezon City filed the very first version of a bill creating the National Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Board, based on TJRC reports.
This was quite an irony. Many of the victims of martial law atrocities were from the Bangsamoro, but no Bangsamoro representative in Congress picked up the recommendations in our TJRC reports.
But in 2017, with a new president—Rodrigo Duterte, who ordered the “carpet bombing” of Marawi starting on May 27, 2017—the prospects of legislating a transitional justice body were quite bleak. Now known as the Marawi siege, that bombing of more than 260 hectares in the main parts of Marawi City killed more than 2,000 individuals and has gone down in history as an incident that qualifies to be addressed through a TJR process.
The 2017 Belmonte bill was sidelined even before it reached the committee level in the lower house of Congress.
Similar later attempts to pass another bill in the latter years of the Duterte administration did not see the light of day in Congress, so to speak.
Upon the assumption of President Marcos in 2022, many of us who have been involved in the popularization of TJR processes became even more discouraged. After all, it was Mr. Marcos’ father who caused all the emblematic atrocities to happen, via his draconian martial law regime.
The crafting of a regional law in BARMM will jump-start a process of truth telling, of addressing the grievances and historical injustices against the Bangsamoro and other victims of martial law in the BARMM and related areas. It has also renewed the push for the crafting of a national TJR law that failed to pass in the previous administration.
This week, we hope that this will happen after a short workshop in Metro Manila. The workshop will bring together TJR subject matter experts and other knowledgeable individuals who will review four versions of a proposed legislation aimed to create a national transitional justice and reconciliation body.
However, if Mr. Marcos realizes the value of passing a TJR law in his time, he should certify the enhanced and final consolidated version as a priority bill, to at least see it become a law before he steps down as president in 2028.
Through a national TJR body, Mr. Marcos may not be able to make people accept it as part of his attempts at reconciling with groups that have suffered under the ironclad rule of his father.
This is the least he can do to redeem the grim legacy that his father has spawned through his draconian martial law orders. If he can do this, it could pave the way for genuine reconciliation among groups that had to fight during those years of government-ordered atrocities, including gender-based violence among women in conflict-affected areas.
More importantly, it can pave the way for creating a truly transformative architecture toward lasting peace not only in the Bangsamoro but also in places where massive human rights violations took place.
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