Armi Beatriz Bayot worked for many years as a government lawyer in the Philippines, specialising in peace processes, human rights law, indigenous peoples' rights law, and other areas of practice. Among her many accomplishments, she was the founding head of the Analysis Unit of the Philippines' Commission on Human Rights, and she participated in the negotiations and drafting of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), which aimed to end the decades-long armed conflict in the southern part of the country. Currently a doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford Faculty of Law, Armi speaks to us in this episode about her experiences in the Philippines and the implications for education.
In this episode, we speak with Armi Beatriz Bayot. Prior to beginning her doctoral research on intrastate peace agreements at the University of Oxford, Armi worked for many years as a lawyer for different agencies within the Philippine government. From 2017 to 2018, she worked for the Commission on Human Rights, for which she founded the unit that analysed data to determine whether large-scale human rights violations were being committed in the country and to formulate strategies and policy responses to these. Prior to this, she worked with the Office of the Solicitor General; she was also legal counsel to the government peace panel in talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), and she participated in the negotiation and drafting of the resulting peace agreement. Armi talks about the lessons she has taken away from her work related to human rights and peace processes and shares with us her reflections on the implications of these for education.
This episode is hosted by Rowena Azada-Palacios, with Kamille Beye, Stella Mi-cheong Cheong, and Adam Peter Lang.
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List of further readings
Bangsamoro Armed Conflict
Commission on Human Rights and the “War on Drugs”
Adam Peter Lang: Hello, everybody, and welcome to Conversations4citizenship, our new innovative podcast. This is season 1, episode 4. I'm now going to pass it over to Rowena who's going to lead this session.
Rowena Azada-Palacios: Thank you, Adam. Hi, everyone. This is Rowena Azada-Palacios. And I'll be leading today's conversation with our guest for this episode, who is Armi. Now Armi is a lawyer and a researcher from the Philippines, specialising in human rights law and peace processes. She's also currently a doctoral candidate in law at the University of Oxford, where she is doing research about intra-state peace agreements. Before this, she worked at the Commission of Human Rights of the Philippines. And before that, with the office of the Solicitor General of the Philippines. She's handled cases related to human rights violations, the ancestral land of indigenous peoples, as well as peace negotiations related to various armed conflicts in different parts of the Philippines. Thank you so much, Armi, for joining us today. As a starting question, would you mind telling our listeners about how you came to be interested in human rights law and the law related to peace processes?
Armi Beatriz Bayot: Hi, Rowena. Hi, everybody. So first of all, my interest in human rights law began after I had already started my practice in peace processes. So I didn't enter or I didn't start my peace process career by having a deep knowledge of armed conflicts, who the key actors were, or what we're even the stakes of the conflict on the ground. What happened was that I had just passed the bar examinations in the Philippines in 2010. And my former professor, who is now the associate justice Marvic Leonen, had just been appointed by then President Aquino to head his new negotiating team in talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. So I was maybe a three-month lawyer, a baby lawyer at the time, and I received the message. And he said, Hey, do you want to join me, I'm creating a new team, a legal team to help me in the peace negotiations with the MILF. And for me, I thought that this is an interesting opportunity. I'm a very young lawyer, I am going to be able to learn a lot of new skills in this engagement. And I mean, I liked the idea of working with Professor Leonen again. He was my professor for a long time, and I was his research assistant at the University of the Philippines. So it seemed like a fun thing, a good thing to be doing as a young lawyer.
And then after months, and eventually years of peace negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, that's when I discovered that the armed conflict was fueled by a lot of grievances on the ground for the Bangsamoro. And these grievances stem from rights violations. So not just violations of civil and political rights, but also economic, social and cultural rights. So as I was doing the work, doing the legal research, and of course, talking to the MILF from across the table, I realised that a deeper understanding of human rights law would be important for me to be able to help the peace process better. So in 2013, I applied for a position to do a master's at King's College London. And so I did my master’s there from 2014 to 2015. And I did a lot of courses on human rights and constitutional design. And from there, I got a deeper appreciation for Human Rights, which complemented my existing practice in peace processes and peace negotiations.
Rowena Azada-Palacios: Thanks so much, Armi, I'm seeing how your career path that began with looking at peace processes in the Philippines was actually what started your interest in human rights issues. But because we have a very international audience, could you just give us a little bit of a background about why there's a need for peace processes in the Philippines? What are these conflicts that are happening? Most people don't know about all of these issues?
Armi Beatriz Bayot: So there are multiple conflict areas and various peace tables in the Philippines. So for instance, I was involved for a short time in the review of the peace agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front. This was a peace agreement that was signed in 1996. And I was also involved for a short time with the peace process with the Communist Party of the Philippines, the National Democratic Front. My engagement with that has mostly to do with the guarantees of security for representatives of the National Democratic Front who wanted to be able to sit in peace negotiations and have their persons secure, free from threats of arrest and so forth. But I think the most significant peace process I was involved with was the peace process with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. So this is a long-standing armed conflict in Mindanao that has deep historical roots. So the Philippines is a former Spanish colony. Spain colonised us for roughly around 300 years. In 1898, the Philippines was ceded to the US through the Treaty of Paris. And through that historical moment, the entire archipelago, which was not fully under the control of the Spanish government, suddenly became the property of the United States. So this historical event triggered many deep feelings of resentment in the south among the people of the island of Mindanao because when we were a colony of Spain, they never felt they were part because they weren't part of the mainstream Catholic population of the Philippines. And then now they're being forced to become part of a new political entity, colony under the United States and the island of Mindanao and Sulu Archipelago suffered a lot of traumas under the US colonial administration as well. So by the 1960s, to the late 1960s, and early 1970s, there arose Moro movements seeking independence from the country. Among the most prominent of these is the Moro National Liberation Front which was led by Nur Misuari and the group that we negotiated with from 2010 to 2016, at least with my team, is a breakaway organisation from the Moro National Liberation Front.
So the root causes of this conflict are, apart from this strong feeling that they don't belong to the mainstream and have never been treated as belonging to the mainstream, rampant land grabbing, dispossession of lands, the entry of non-Muslims into their territories, entry of businesses that didn't benefit the communities, and I think very significantly, the acts of armed violence they suffered under the Philippine military in the 1970s, among the most famous incidents was the burning of Jolo in 1974, where Philippine military set the city of Jolo to flames and it has never recovered until now. And then, of course, various massacres were in the military-supported Christian vigilante groups to target Muslims. One incident was called the Manili Massacre wherein 70 Muslims, including women and children, were brought inside a mosque and shot dead, killed by these vigilantes. So there are a lot of deep resentments, violence and economic exclusions that have happened there.
The peace negotiations with the MILF happened formally in the 90s, when they signed a ceasefire agreement, then it's been a rough road for this peace process, starting from the height of the armed conflict in the early 1970s, where a prominent military officer even said that, this is the time that we almost lost Mindanao, that was how bad it was – until the Moro National Liberation Front signed a peace agreement with the government. Then there was a government, uh, a breakaway organisation with whom the government also had to negotiate. And it is the Moro Islamic Liberation Front with which we signed the peace agreement in 2014. So ¯very long, complicated history.
Rowena Azada-Palacios: Thank you. Thank you. I think for the benefit of our viewers it's helpful for people unfamiliar with the geography of the Philippines to know that Mindanao is the largest of the southernmost islands, right?, in the Philippines and hearing, you know, growing up in the Philippines myself, I grew up in Luzon, which is the northernmost part of the Philippines. And we often in school didn't actually hear a lot of stories about Mindanao, except in passing. And now, you know, in your own experience, you've had this career where you've heard a lot of stories about Mindanao. From this experience, who stories do you think need to be heard more in which groups of people do you think are often not sufficiently thought about or known about or heard about in the rest of the country?
Armi Beatriz Bayot: So I think in the Philippines, the reason that a lot of the conflicts are intractable is because, precisely what you said, we don't know how the rest of us live. We have no idea about their histories. So I think it's very important for us to learn about the histories and lived experiences of historically marginalised and minoritised groups in the Philippines, in particular, and also, I think, in other jurisdictions, other countries in the world. Just a cursory review of the various conflicts that have been happening around the world since maybe the 90s would show that a lot of it has been fueled by interethnic conflict, and a lot of it is, of course, every conflict context is different and conflict contexts are in essence complex. But I have a strong feeling that a lot of intractability stems from not knowing each other's histories and not seeing each other's histories as legitimate because even if one knows about the other party's version of events, these versions are not always regarded as legitimate or valid experiences and perspectives.
So in the Philippines, that's really been a big problem. One of my jobs in the peace panel was not just to negotiate in, you know, across the negotiating table, but also to go around the country to promote the peace process. So that was a big part of my job, I had to go to other parts of the Philippines to tell them about the progress of the peace process, to show them the draft laws that were developed for the peace agreement after we'd already signed it, of course, in order to gain public support. And also for them to understand why this is a project that's being prioritised by the government. And it always struck me that one of the first instincts of people who live far away from Mindanao is to ask me, “Why are we making peace with these people? These are terrorists. These are bad people, they've killed people, and they cause disruption. And they’ve cost the lives of many of our soldiers. Why should we care about what happens there? And why should we give them these concessions in the peace agreement?” And it's, it's very tough to counter these ideas and feelings when all that they've been hearing about in the news is how Muslims are bad, how Muslims are terrible, and how they want to secede or they're not sincere. This is a very, very serious problem. And I think it's still true today. So that's, I feel that we should learn more about the histories of our, of other peoples in our country.
Rowena Azada-Palacios: Thank you so much, Armi. Let's talk about it in a more hopeful way, as well. So you know, handling all of these peace negotiations with different groups and in different parts of the country. What lessons do you think about the breeze peace process, have you learned that you think are also applicable across different contexts, both in the Philippines and possibly even elsewhere?
Armi Beatriz Bayot: A very important lesson, I think, that I've seen echoed in other peace and conflict contexts is the importance of inclusion. So peace processes are by nature exclusionary processes because peace processes are means through which governments seek to manage conflict by negotiating with an armed group and trying to figure out what concessions might be granted in exchange for a cessation of hostilities. And some of these concessions include the sharing of power, creation of new territorial units, territorial autonomy, or even agreeing to future independence for that section of the polity. And the armed group might require it, might make it a condition of coming to the peace table, to exclude other actors. They might require that there, that other armed groups that they see as rivals, or other ethnic groups that they think might detract from the concessions that they seek, they might ask that these groups should not be excluded, but included, rather. And it's, it's not going to be easy for the state party to the negotiations to insist on broader, broader inclusion on the negotiating table from the beginning because that might impede the progress of the talks.
But at the same time, when you're talking about state reordering, the grant of greater rights to a particular group, the grant of powers, government powers and the sharing of sovereignty with a new political group, it's just so fundamental that all stakeholders must be included and must be heard. So the means through which this is addressed in these processes around the world is for continuing consultations to be done with stakeholders outside of the negotiation table. And the results of these negotiations, or these consultations are always fed into the main peace process. And this has been done in the Philippines as well as in Colombia. An important step is to present the peace agreement to public scrutiny before you put it into legal effect. You have to give the people a chance to speak about it, discuss it and if necessary, reject it before it's given legal effect. Otherwise, people will be disenfranchised. and there will be a lot of rights that might be disregarded or might be impacted without people having had the chance to have their say.
So the inclusion of stakeholders and communities that will be affected by the peace agreement is very important.
And another important aspect of peace processes regarding inclusion is the inclusion of women in peace negotiations. This is something I'm very proud of in the Philippines because the peace agreement that was signed in 2014 is the first major peace agreement in the world that was signed by a chief negotiator who is a woman. So, and then on the side of the government party, half of us were women, and the heads of all of the sub-teams were mostly women. This was a challenge that we gave to the MILF early on. We said for there to be meaningful peace negotiations, there should be meaningful participation of women, and that this challenge was met by the MILF. Eventually, they brought women to their team. Women sat with them in the team in the negotiations. And this is something that I would like to see replicated around the world because you know when you talk about war and peace, you always have men's perspectives. But women disproportionately get affected by the consequences of conflict in their various roles in society, as mothers as young girls, and even as young combatants, the experience of women in war is so different from that of men, and their voices should be heard in these negotiations.
So those aspects of inclusion I think are very important. And I've seen these conversations, not just in the Philippines, but in other conflict contexts, with broader inclusion of stakeholders and the greater participation of women. This is where we should be headed in these processes.
Rowena Azada-Palacios: That's really interesting, Armi Beatriz Bayot. And I'm really struck by what you said about the role of women in the peace negotiations that you were a part of. How do you think the presence of women in the peace negotiations, influences the discussions that take place at those tables and influence the outcome as well?
Armi Beatriz Bayot: So I can only speak about my very specific experience. I think one important effect of this is that for many of the older men in the room, having to face much younger women, particularly on the other side of the table, I think it created the expectation that this is something, that out that young women anywhere in the Philippines would be and should be able to do, that young women shouldn't necessarily always be assumed to be the secretaries or notetakers in the team. Because for example, I was the chief legal officer for the economic provisions of the peace agreement. And nobody should assume or should think that just because I am the woman sitting on that side of the table, I'm also in charge of the notes or the photocopying. I think that there was definitely a change, I don't want to say change, because I don't want to assume how it is in their own particular contexts with women. But let's say, I feel like having women in key positions of leadership in the peace negotiation helped all the other women in the whole context. Everybody was respected as part, as key members of the negotiating teams and not just as the assistants or the women, nobody assumed that the women were there to be assistants.
As far as substantively, I think it was one of the things that I remember is that women negotiators are more detail-oriented. I don't want to go into stereotypes. But this is really what I remember from the peace negotiations. Because I remember that some of the men in the room would sometimes get impatient when the women would say, we forgot this part, or this was on our agenda yesterday and we skipped it. We were very particular about what needed to be done, how things should be done, and whether something has been forgotten. I know that tested their patience, but I think that that has good results as well.
But I would be remiss if I didn't point out some weird experiences from being a woman in peace negotiations. There were certain expectations of how we should act that I found strange. For instance, we got memos on the length of our skirts at some point. And we took it seriously because we didn't want to be the women who interfered with the progress of the peace process just because we wanted to be stylish. But at the same time, we had a small huddle among the women members. And we felt, you know, all of us are wearing knee-length skirts. This is – we're all wearing business attire. So I don't see why this is anybody's issue or anybody's problem. We never found out who made that request. We never found out whether that request came from the government or the MILF side, to be fair, but the fact that that was circulated among the women members of the team still strikes me to this day.
And another strange thing is that we would often hear in these talks, you have the time inside the room, and then you get coffee breaks, and then there are informal side huddles. And I would always hear comments, both from the government side and the MILF left side, that the women's speakers in the room tended to be more emotional, which I feel was not true. I feel that was an assessment coming from their own expectations of women because everybody was equally emotional. I can tell you that not only did the women raise their voices, but the men also raised them even more. So the fact that the idea of women being emotional was often raised, even though I observed that everybody displayed a range of strong emotions as well, I think is also worth noting and worth remembering from my experience.
Rowena Azada-Palacios: Thank you so much, Armi. Wow, what stories you have. So interesting and inspiring and amazing as well. Now, the other side of your work, of your career has been connected to your work in the Commission on Human Rights. Now you were working for the CHR at a time when there was when there were a lot of allegations about human rights violations happening in the country. What was that like?
Armi Beatriz Bayot: So I was at the CHR for a very short period, a little more than a year. But it coincided with an extraordinary rise in the number of killings. So it got so bad to the point that we were struggling to keep up with the numbers, with the cases, with the data because I headed – I founded and headed the analysis unit. So we just received investigations done by our investigators. And you know, we had to do our analysis, our heat maps as it was trying to find patterns, and all that. And then while we're working with a set of information, new ones would come in constantly, and we would have to recalibrate. And also, this coincided with the time that we were really suffering a lot of pressure from the Duterte administration. The CHR not only conducted investigations into the killings, but we made a lot of public statements against the spate of killings in the Philippines. And, of course, the President got very angry, publicly told us off, and even threatened to abolish the institution altogether. And he would launch tirades against us, and specifically against the former chairperson Chito Gascon.
So I, I'll give you an example. So in August 2017, President Duterte warned that he will order the shooting of human rights advocates if they were obstructing justice. And when he was asked about the recent one-time big-time operations of the Philippine National Police in Bulacan, which led to 32 deaths in just 24 hours, he just reacted, “Good!” And when he was, when he reacted to criticisms of the war on drugs, he said that these human rights advocates are just making so much noise. And he referred specifically to Chito. He said, That guy, that guy is a white-skinned fool. He called him “ulol na mestizo” and other things. Other things. This was also the time that the House of Representatives threatened to just give the Commission on Human Rights a budget of 1000 pesos, so which would have effectively abolished the CHR. But the public outcry against that made Congress change their minds. And eventually, they approved the budget, but a much smaller budget than what we were asking for in Congress. So it was, all of these things were happening when I was there.
Personally, I saw the toll on my staff, because they were reviewing, I don't know now how many, hundreds upon hundreds of really gruesome reports. And these were younger lawyers, they were getting traumatised. I could see that it was getting really tough for them. It was very clear that everybody needed a mental health break and a nonprofit organisation even very kindly offered to give us like a therapy session like co-fund that or at least organise a group of psychologists to see us. And I told my team that this is available for you on this day, at this place, just show up. And none of us showed up, not even me, because there was just too much work. We would, we would, we felt that we would fall behind. We were working weekdays and weekends to come up with our reports. So it was heartbreaking work and frustrating work. But I feel it's necessary to work. And now that Duterte’s term is about to end, I'm just a little bit worried that I think people have forgotten how bad it was at the height of the drug war, when I was there, 2016 to 2018. [Editor’s note: Armi emailed us to clarify that she meant to say, 2017 to 2018.] I think we've forgotten specific names and specific incidents that outraged us at the time. But we don't know about it, we hardly talk about it now. And that's one thing that troubles me about those days.
Rowena Azada-Palacios: But I think also, I mean, it was precisely your kind of work, right? I mean, you know, getting all of that data and analysing all of the data, as well as the work, of course of journalists and as well, you know, the NGOs, who were involved with, with the victims, I think that's the kind of work that, you know, records it, and puts it down on paper, right? for future generations.
Armi Beatriz Bayot: Well that’s the goal for sure.
Rowena Azada-Palacios: Which leads to my next question, really. So as someone who has had direct access to all of these reports, all these, horrific and gruesome reports about human rights violations, what do you think is important for young people to know and learn about human rights?
Armi Beatriz Bayot: So I think, first of all, a system that not only allows but celebrates the killing of innocents, in this kind of society, nobody is saved. So I had a team of maybe seven to eight young people. And out of seven to eight people, two of us had close relatives who died in the war on drugs. That's how close it was. There was a time when we were working on this that we felt it could happen to any one of us at any time. And I don't think I'll ever forget that feeling. So when we feel that it's not going to happen to us, I feel that that's when we let it happen. You know, when we feel it's very far, but in this case, and in the human rights situation in the Philippines, I don't think rights violations are that far from anybody.
And then a second, which is related to the big numbers I was talking about earlier, I think when we start to read human rights news reports that talk about thousands of people dead or thousands of people tortured, it becomes very abstract. And we begin to forget that those, behind those numbers, are people. So I think we should teach young people that when you see the word “human rights” and “human rights violation”, you should reflect on the word “human”. There's a person behind every one of those numbers, and there's a story and there's a, you know, a network of families involved. So the human element of it, the human part of it should never be forgotten.
Rowena Azada-Palacios: Thank you. Thanks for that. And on that note, you know, you've had the opportunity to be at the centre of peace negotiations, at the centre of analysis into the country's human rights situation, but most of the general public will not have those opportunities that you've had. So my question is, what can a regular person an ordinary member of the public do to promote peace and human rights?
Armi Beatriz Bayot: I think a very important step is to stay informed and learn as much as you can. So I think it's, uh, these are important steps that I think everyone should take. We should keep reading the news, stay up-to-date on current events, and to the best of our ability, learn the story behind the news, and learn the story behind these events. These events are not significant for what happens on a particular day, but they're significant for what they represent, you know, within the context of history. When I say, learn more about these events in these news stories, of course, I mean, read history books, or watch documentaries about these.
But apart from that crucial step, I think it's important for us to seek out people with whom we can have conversations about these things. So for young people that can include talking to older members of their families, their teachers. And for professionals, it's, you know, seeking out people in your peer group whom you know, are closer to these events who might be working on these events. So among my peer group of lawyers, I think there are only two of us who work in government. And I always appreciate that my lawyer friends in the corporate world, they always text me, they always engage with me, they ask me, “We saw this in the news. Is there something you know about this? We'd like to learn to know more.” And I think this kind of attitude allows a person to have greater empathy for people involved in these events. And having, that greater empathy also opens the door for you to find ways to help if, if such an opportunity presents itself in the future. So it starts with being informed, I think and making a deliberate effort to understand better
Rowena Azada-Palacios: Thank you so much for that. You were talking about how, you know, we are all at different distances from these events that are happening, right? So you, for example, where you saw everything up close, other people might only hear about all of these incidents on the news. And right now, there are conflicts going on, on almost every continent in the world, Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, and so forth. There are human rights violations happening in every part of the world. What gives you hope?
Armi Beatriz Bayot: So you know, I've been reflecting about this yesterday. And I have to be honest, and I cannot really say that there's any specific observation that I've made, that gives me hope. But I can share with you something that my colleagues in the peace process used to say to each other at the end of a particularly hard day, that we should always remember that our job description is to remain hopeful and to work towards something to hope for. That's the job of a peace practitioner.
So I think as long as they're the first ones who study peace and work towards a peaceful resolution of conflict, I don't think there's a way for us to remain in this situation, I think we will eventually find our way there. But there are equally difficult things to address, and conflict is becoming more and more complex as the years go by. For example, we're familiar with how online social media disinformation and hate speech have been used, for example, in Myanmar to justify attacks against the Rohingya. There are so many new ways to inflict harm on other people, that our ways of addressing armed conflict and conflict in general also need to evolve.
So there's much work to be done in this space really, and I hope that more young people would get interested and, you know, find ways to be able to be involved in this space, if not to do this full time, you know, as a career in the future, because there's really a lot of work to be done in this space, in particular, for lawyers. I know a lot of lawyers are very interested in other aspects of the law of armed conflict. But a few – it's a very small subset who are interested in the law on making peace. So I think the professional interests of certain professional groups such as the legal community would also profit from having a change in perspective towards armed conflict.
Rowena Azada-Palacios: Thanks so much, Armi. That's really inspiring, and I hope that some very listeners actually take up this challenge, and you know, pursue a career in these directions. Um, I'd like to ask my colleagues Stella, Adam and Kamille, do you have any questions? Go ahead, Kamille.
Adam Peter Lang: Can I say something?
Rowena Azada-Palacios: Sorry, go ahead, Adam. I'm sorry.
Adam Peter Lang: That's, that's very, very interesting, and also from a Filipino perspective. I just I’ll just pick up on a couple of things you said. You said knowing others’ histories. I think that's very powerful. And also, I just wanted to just ask you a bit about this distance. Because you've studied at King's in London and you're now at Oxford. Are you actually in the UK as we speak?
Armi Beatriz Bayot: Yes, I am. I’m in the UK.
Adam Peter Lang: So I was gonna ask you this question. It partly comes from a book I've read by Pankaj Mishra who's an Indian writer and academic. And he's written some very interesting stuff recently about nationalism, populism, terrorism and so on. But he said, I went to seminars recently, he said he can't write that kind of thing anymore. He so he's gone back to writing a novel because he can explain things better. And actually, when you read some of his work, when he cites things, he often finds a limited amount of historical analysis or even papers, because it's so colonially dread from the west. So he uses lots of literature and poetry actually, as part of his reference points. So my question really is, because we were an international podcast, and we’ve got lots of international listeners, from your perspective, your story, How do you, how does that play out for you being a Filipino academic in the UK? Is that space, that distance helpful? Or can you share some of the sorts of obstacles you might have had? Or do have in terms of being, uh, taking your subject and teaching it? Do you have to find that sort of barrier of colonialism still there within the institutions that you're in? Or how do you find that?
Armi Beatriz Bayot: Oh, so I mean, this, this raises a lot of feelings and thoughts I had, especially at the start of, of DPhil. So first of all, the benefit of distance for me, I definitely feel that being a little bit distant from the context now has helped my research. Because I, you know, I'm new to the academic space, I've been a practising lawyer for many years. And not just that, I've been a government lawyer all my life. So my legal approach comes from a very specific place, which is to make government policy work. That's how I think.
But that's not the position I have, that's not the stance I should have, when I'm doing the research, for the dissertation. And I think, in the beginning, I was so determined to write something that supported what I did, that it probably delayed me by a good two or three months. Because I couldn't accept that what I was reading was inconsistent with what I did. Very specifically, I know that the peace agreement we negotiated has not been very favourable to indigenous peoples, vis-a-vis the Bangsamoro. I mean, it's 2022. Now, and a lot of people have made that observation apart from me already, so I feel safe to say that now. But when I was starting this research, I didn't feel like it was something I could readily admit. But having the distance both physically, and also, in terms of time, from the time that the peace agreement was signed, I think I could have more objectivity, in what we did. I could admit where we made mistakes. I could admit that some of the decisions we made were for the sake of expediency, which is not a bad word, in my opinion, as a government lawyer, it's what needed to be done at that time to get things done. But there were some consequences that need to be addressed.
In terms of colonialism. I'm not sure if what I felt was colonial friction, but I had the feeling when I was making my initial, you know, presentations or discussions with other people, you know, in different contexts in the UK, that people didn't care about the war in the Philippines. Like, “Why are you writing about that? Nobody knows what's happening there, and nobody cares what's happening there. Why did you choose that as one of your case studies?” And it makes me begin to doubt that, am I only choosing this because I'm so close to the process? Or is there really something that can be studied from this case study? And that experience of these pushbacks making me question my own decisions in terms of my research, I feel, I don't know if you can call that a colonial pushback against my research. But looking back, I feel like I shouldn't have let these kinds of questions make me doubt whether the context in the Philippines is important to study, because we have a lot to learn from this context. And the fact that people don't think it's important, I think that says more about the general academic space than my research. So those are the thoughts I had.
Adam Peter Lang: Well, thank you for those reflections. That's very, very interesting what you said. Thank you so much, I'll pass it over to either Stella or Kamille.
Kamille Beye: Hi, Armi, you had such a wonderful presentation. I really loved everything that you were saying. And I wanted to piggyback on Adam a little bit more in-depth. So we always talk about how victors are the ones who write history. And we talked earlier, you talked earlier about having to get those marginalised communities, how do you get their stories told when they are not part of the “winning team”, quote, unquote. How are you able to get people to hear or understand or even be willing to know more about these marginalised communities when they haven't been given the space to really exist in a larger dominant community anyway?
Armi Beatriz Bayot: That's a hard question. Because I think I'm also in that stage where I'm also trying to figure out how to make that happen how to create space. I think it's difficult because especially in the context of the Philippines, the Bangsamoro were able to create space for themselves by waging armed conflict. And that's why they were able to, “force” a space where you had no choice but to engage with them. But it also makes you reflect and think, is that the only way that marginalised groups are able to create spaces for themselves? So in the Philippine example, the Indigenous peoples have also been, have also waged the so-to-speak their own advocacy for the right to self-determination since at least the early 80s. And instead of embarking on armed conflict, what they did was embarking on legislative advocacy. And it's through this, that they were able to have the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act enacted, I think, in 1997. So that's how they were able to do it in the Philippines. They were able to have this very progressive law on the protection of Indigenous Peoples' rights enacted. This law recognises native title or their title to their lands that predate the Spanish government. So on paper, it's really good. But then you have the Indigenous peoples who live within the territory of the current autonomous region, the Bangsamoro autonomous region. So they have a national law that protects them. But the future Bangsamoro Parliament potentially could enact a law that could be better than the current national law, but could also potentially maybe not be as good because they are now under the jurisdiction of a subdivision of government. So they have, you have two levels of governance above them. And how are they going to make space for themselves in that context, where it is, first of all, called the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region. It's named after a different ethnolinguistic group than them. And then the law that should protect them will be enacted by Bangsamoro.
I really, I really find it hard to answer this question, because this is precisely what we have created. They already had the space, they already had the national. And I feel like this is a part of the conversation, that maybe we can edit a little bit, but they already had the space in the national conversation by forcing the Philippine Government to enact that law, that that law was deemed constitutional in a Supreme Court case. They've been able to hold on to that national space. Um, but now they're in danger of possibly being marginalised again. Their, for example, their ancestral domains haven’t been delineated within the Bangsamoro autonomous region. So I really don't know I hope, I hope I am able to find ways, but the solutions that we sought for Indigenous peoples haven't really worked out that well for us yet, both on the national level and at the regional level. Thanks. Sorry about that.
Rowena Azada-Palacios: Thank you. Thank you, Armi. That's really helpful. I'm thinking, I'm going to ask you a question. And then we're going to see where we can put it in just to contextualise what you've just described, it might not come in, in the order that I’ve asked, Can you briefly say what the Bangsamoro is and what the outcome of the peace negotiations was for the benefit of our listeners?
Armi Beatriz Bayot: So there's already an existing autonomous region in Mindanao. So this is the result of various peace negotiations between various representatives of the Bangsamoro with the central government dating since the1970s.
Rowena Azada-Palacios: Yes, and who are the Bangsamoro?
Armi Beatriz Bayot: “Bangsamoro” means “Moro Nation”. It’s a collective group of at least I think around 13 ethno-linguistic groups who identify as Islamised groups in Mindanao. To be clear the Bangsamoro don't stand for a very specific ethnolinguistic group. They, it is a political identity that was introduced in the 1960s by the Moro National Liberation Front and which has taken root. It's a term that has allowed the various peoples of Mindanao to come together to unify against the, you know. oppressive central Philippine government.
Rowena Azada-Palacios: Thank you. Stella, do you have any questions?
Stella Mi-cheong Cheong: Yeah, can I have –?
Armi Beatriz Bayot: Yes
Stella Mi-cheong Cheong: Thank you so much, Armi. I'm so interested in your topic, your research area because my main research area is related to peacebuilding and conflict transformation. So I'm really interested in the Philippine context. I have two questions. Maybe the first question is one of the most controversial issues because when it comes, you’ve already mentioned extrajudicial killings in the Philippines so yeah, when it comes to the Philippines, anti-legal drug operations, and many people mentioned this kind of human rights violations. As a human rights lawyer, I'm just wondering about your personal opinions. Do you think the Commission of Human Rights’ response to such human rights violations works effectively in the Philippine context?
Armi Beatriz Bayot: I think we should address issues of the effectiveness of the Commission on Human Rights within the context of its role and the limitations of its mandate. So the Commission on Human Rights in the Philippines is mandated to investigate human rights violations. In other words, its mandate is limited to fact-finding. But it has no prosecutorial powers. It must refer, the fact– the results of its fact-finding to other agencies, for example, the national prosecutorial service or the Ombudsman, or wherever. So in terms of that, I think the Commission on Human Rights has punched above, above its weight in this regard. I know for a fact that despite what people might think of the Commission on Human Rights, I know that all the various investigators all over the country faithfully investigate complaints that come to their office and submit these reports to the relevant authorities. However, you also have to remember that it's a very underfunded and understaffed government agency. So its effectiveness is also limited by what they think it can do within the budget and the staffing that it has. Now factor in the enormity of the human rights crisis in the Philippines, I think there's really a very big gap between what the Commission on Human Rights can do and what needs to be done. So in terms of effectiveness, it has done what it can. It is, it is accredited under the GANHRI as a Level A NHRI, a national human rights institution. So it's well regarded internationally and it submits reports to the UPR under the UN Human Rights Council. But beyond what it can do within its mandate, and within its budget, I think we can’t, we can’t expect more than that.
The thing though, that I think we should watch out for is that the new commission is about to be appointed, appointed by Duterte, because the previous commissioners’ term just ended last May 5, so there will be a new commission coming in. So I think what we should consider is to be alert as to whether the new commission might experience pressure on it, on its independence. And on its free movement within the Philippines in the next months and years to come. So it's a new commission, and also a new president. So those are things we should watch out for in terms of hoping that the Commission on Human Rights continues to be effective or even more effective.
Stella Mi-cheong Cheong: Wow, thank you. Thank you, Armi Beatriz Bayot, so much for your time today and for the rich and fruitful discussion on such an important topic. It's great to talk with you and have this conversation. Well, I believe that this conversation with you have served as an opportunity for our listeners to understand the various forms of conflict in the Philippines and the contributions of government or non-governmental organisation to transform conflicts in post-conflict and conflict-affected contexts. Above all, your message that violent conflict and human rights violations can happen everywhere, to everyone is very helpful and inspiring. So as cosmopolitan citizens, we need more global solidarity and compassion to resolve such human rights violations. Armi, thank you, again for your contribution.
Now I’m closing today’s episode. Thank you for listening to Conversations4Citizenship. We hope you enjoy this episode. Be sure to subscribe Conversations4Citizenship and look for us on Twitter, Conversations4citizenship. A transcript of today's conversation with Armi Beatriz Bayot can be found at www.conversations4citizenship.com. In the upcoming episode, we will have a conversation with Kourtney Woodbury, a PhD student at Clemson University, United States, and an assistant director for Planned Parenthood, about women’s rights and abortion bans in the States. This episode of conversation for citizenship was produced by Adam Peter Lang Lang, Kamille Beye, and Rowena Azada-Palacios Palacios, and me. Recorded and sound-mixed by Dain Jeong.