Tausug lawyer helps build peace for Moro homeland
Raissa Jajurie is now part of its interim government that has been working to build the foundations of effective Moro autonomy. PHOTOS BY RICHEL V. UMEL AND BTA PUBLICATION OFFICE
MANILA, Philippines — Sometime in late 2014, lawyer Raissa Jajurie, then a member of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC), was patiently explaining to participants of a peace forum in Zamboanga City that the ultimate test of the autonomy envisioned by the peace deal between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is when future Bangsamoro institutions are able to address people’s needs and aspirations more effectively compared to previous ones.
The forum participants, mostly civil society leaders and former Moro revolutionaries from the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, were asked to give their thoughts about the BTC’s draft charter of the Bangsamoro autonomous government then pending before Congress, so that it would fully reflect the Moro people’s longing for self-rule, apart from being true to what were already defined in the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB).
The signing of the CAB on March 27, 2014, after 17 years of negotiation, formally ended the Moro secessionist rebellion, the conflict that drove Jajurie away from her Tausug roots in Sulu in the 1970s.
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After being uprooted from Jolo, Jajurie grew up in Manila where she eventually finished her studies, earning a political science degree at the Ateneo de Manila University and finishing law at the University of the Philippines Diliman.
IRTHING BANGSAMORO Maranao women (left photo) join a rally in 2018 to push for the enactment by Congress of the law that will give birth to the Bangsamoro autonomous region.
Empowerment
She then embarked on a career empowering underprivileged sectors. For over two decades, Jajurie served in various capacities within the Sentro ng Alternatibong Lingap Panlegal (Saligan) Inc., a nongovernment organization providing legal assistance to marginalized, disadvantaged and exploited communities in the country.
Jajurie already held a leadership role in Saligan when a young Leni Robredo joined the organization for its work in Bicol communities. When she was elected the country’s vice president, Robredo had fond recollections of her work with these communities, even acknowledging that the experience largely shaped her perspective about what it means to be a lawyer. While campaigning for the presidency in 2022, Robredo acknowledged Jajurie as “my former boss” during a courtesy call with top Bangsamoro leaders.
In addition to her work with Saligan, Jajurie cofounded Nisa Ul Haqq Fi Bangsamoro (Women for Justice in the Bangsamoro), an organization based in Zamboanga City that seeks to improve the lives of community women. She also played a pivotal role in establishing the Bangsamoro Lawyers’ Network, which works to empower Bangsamoro communities by equipping them with legal knowledge and support.
Expert among Moro elders
As the Bangsamoro peace process progressed under the administration of then President Benigno Aquino III, the male-dominated MILF leadership found Jajurie’s legal expertise and experience, honed in various community contexts, valuable. Hence, she was invited to be part of the MILF’s board of consultants, becoming the first woman to join its delegation for talks in Kuala Lumpur in late 2011.
Jajurie noted then that her inclusion in the MILF peace panel was a signal of the group’s “openness… to women’s participation in peacemaking.”
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She eventually became part of the legal pool that helped the panels craft the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro in 2012, and the CAB in 2014.
After the peace negotiations, Jajurie joined the drafting of the Bangsamoro charter that would later be enacted as Republic Act No. 11054, or the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL). When the BOL was ratified in a plebiscite on Jan. 21, 2019, Jajurie was appointed by then President Rodrigo Duterte as one of 80 members of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority, the interim government of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) led by MILF chief Ahod “Al Haj Murad” Ebrahim. She was reappointed by President Marcos in 2022.
Ebrahim also tapped Jajurie to be at the helm of the Ministry of Social Services and Development (MSSD), the third largest in the BARMM bureaucracy, tasked with providing social protection services to vulnerable women and children, humanitarian relief to disaster victims and overseeing the rollout in the region of the national government’s welfare programs such as supplemental feeding for preschool kids, social pension for senior citizens and conditional cash transfer.
In addition, MSSD services are tapped in profiling deportees from Sabah so they can be effectively reintegrated into the country, and helping transition former terrorists into peaceful citizens in mainstream society.
NEW LIFE The 2014 peace deal that Raissa Jajurie helped to negotiate will transform former Moro fighters into productive civilians. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
High expectations
In the context of the postconflict transition, MSSD carries the weight of people’s expectations that they would be able to enjoy the dividends of peace through, at the very least, access to welfare services.
In this role, Jajurie displays her mettle and organizational acumen. Apart from overseeing the rollout of five nationally funded programs under the umbrella of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, MSSD has 15 flagship initiatives, some of which are the first of their kind in the country. Among these are the Kupkop Program that has so far provided close to 23,000 orphaned children with financial resources to help them access balanced nutrition, education, a healthy lifestyle, and secure and caring alternative care arrangements; and the Kalinga sa May Kapansanan Program that has so far provided 36,600 persons with disabilities at least P6,000 worth of annual subsidies for their health and medical needs.
Despite the humongous task, MSSD has fared well. In the last five years, it has catered to over 2.5 million clients—at least 844,000 under nationally funded programs and about 1.7 million in its own flagship programs. These include women, children, the elderly, differently-abled persons, indigenous peoples, persons displaced by armed hostilities and vulnerable individuals affected by crises and natural or human-induced calamities.
Landmark legislation
Amid the challenges of leading a key agency, Jajurie was still able to shepherd landmark legislation in the interim Bangsamoro parliament such as the Bangsamoro Administrative Code, which defines the institutional architecture of the regional government; the Bangsamoro Civil Service Code; the Bangsamoro Electoral Code, which provides for the procedures for electing representatives who will occupy the three categories of parliamentary seats; and the Bangsamoro Local Governance Code, which defines the relationship between the regional government and its constituent local government units.
Today, Jajurie’s life has come full circle. Her work in helping negotiate a peace deal and building the strong foundations of Bangsamoro autonomy will help address the roots of the conflict that had originally driven her out of LUPAH SUG in the past.
