Across more than four decades, the conflict between the national government and Muslim liberation forces in the southern Philippines has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions. Two landmark agreements under the presidency of Benigno S Aquino III — the first in 2012 and the second in 2014 — raised high hopes that peace might finally be on the way. But the peace process stalled, and has yet to regain momentum, after a botched counterterrorism operation in early 2015.This volume provides both in-depth examination of the latest stage of a still-ongoing peace process as well as richly textured analysis of the historical, political, and economic context underlying one of the most enduring conflicts in the world. It is thus an extremely important foundational resource in the continuing quest for peace and prosperity in Mindanao.

Just over a year ago, the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) was formally established as part of a peace agreement to end nearly five decades of conflict between the Philippine government and Moro secessionists. This report discusses the many notable achievements of the BARMM government during its first year while cautioning that these accomplishments are not irreversible, and that the BARMM will need international support—including from the United States—to confront future challenges.

"First published in 1981, ""The Sulu Zone"" has become a classic in the field of Southeast Asian History. The book deals with a fascinating geographical, cultural and historical ""border zone"" centred on the Sulu and Celebes Seas between 1768 and 1898, and its complex interactions with China and the West. The author examines the social and cultural forces generated within the Sulu Sultanate by the China trade, namely the advent of organized, long distance maritime slave raiding and the assimilation of captives on a hitherto unprecedented scale into a traditional Malayo-Muslim social system. How entangled commodities, trajectories of tastes, and patterns of consumption and desire that span continents linked to slavery and slave raiding, the manipulation of diverse ethnic groups, the meaning and constitution of ""culture, "" and state formation? James Warren responds to this question by reconstructing the social, economic, and political relationships of diverse peoples in a multi-ethnic zone of which the Sulu Sultanate was the centre, and by problematizing important categories like ""piracy"", ""slavery"", ""culture"", ""ethnicity"", and the ""state"". His work analyzes the dynamics of the last autonomous Malayo-Muslim maritime state over a long historical period and describes its stunning response to the world capitalist economy and the rapid ""forward movement"" of colonialism and modernity. It also shows how the changing world of global cultural flows and economic interactions caused by cross-cultural trade and European dominance affected men and women who were forest dwellers, highlanders, and slaves, people who worked in everyday jobs as fishers, raiders, divers or traders. Often neglected by historians, the response of these members of society are a crucial part of the history of Southeast Asia."--

The last decade has seen an upsurge in violent internal conflicts in southern Thailand, southern Philippines, Sri Lanka, and a number of regions in Indonesia and the Pacific. Like terrorism and nuclear proliferation, violent internal conflicts are increasingly being seen as a global security issue.

This publication takes a look at one segment of the new social movements in the Philippines, the peace movement.