 |  |  |
- Speaker: Miriam CORONEL-FERRER (Peace activist, co-founder of Southeast Asian Women Peace Mediators)
- Moderator: Masako ISHII (Professor, Rikkyo University)
- Language: English with Japanese subtitles
- Release Date: March 29, 2024
- Organizer: International House of Japan
- Sponsor: MRA Foundation
New Video
For the second session of the 2024 “Leaders Shaping the Future of the Indo-Pacific” series, we welcomed peace activist Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, who served as head of the team negotiating peace with Islamic militant groups in the Mindanao region of the Philippines.
The current conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine demonstrate how difficult negotiations and peacebuilding can be. Coronel-Ferrer, who led the peace talks for the long-running civil war 10 years ago in Mindanao, spoke of the difficulties she faced at the time and the important role women can play in the negotiating process.
Miriam CORONEL-FERRER(Peace activist, co-founder of Southeast Asian Women Peace Mediators)
became the first-ever female chief negotiator to sign the final peace accord in 2014 when the government of the Philippines reached an agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). She was appointed in 2010 by President Benigno Aquino III to the government’s negotiating team, and took over as chair in 2012. With other women peacebuilders, Coronel-Ferrer initiated the drafting of the Philippines’ first National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security which was eventually adopted by the government in 2010 as part of its commitment to the UN Security Council Resolution 1325. The Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) was signed in 2014 by the Philippine government and MILF. In 2020, Coronel-Ferrer co-founded the Southeast Asian Women Peace Mediators, a pioneering group of women engaged in convening safe spaces for dialogues and supporting mediation initiatives in countries like Myanmar and Afghanistan.
Masako ISHII (Professor at College of Intercultural Communication, Rikkyo University) obtained her Ph.D. in International Relations from Sophia University. Based on her Ph.D. thesis, she has published a book entitled, Stories of Muslim Women in the Philippines; Armed Conflict, Development and Social Change (Akashi Shoten, 2002, in Japanese) and it was awarded Okita Memorial Award by Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development (FASID). Her recent edited publications are: Bitter Realities of Sweet Bananas (Commons, 2020 in Japanese); Asian Migrant Workers in the Arab Gulf States: The Growing Foreign Population and Their Lives (Brill, 2019); International Labour Migration in the Middle East and Asia: Issues of Inclusion and Exclusion (Springer, 2019).