Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 1
In forceAn Act Adopting the Official Flag of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao
The region has one official flag with an exact specification — dimensions, hex colours and proportions — and every Bangsamoro office, public office, school, college, university and government corporation is required to display it, alongside the Philippine flag.
Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Signed into law and operative unless later amended or repealed.
What this measure does
This adopts the Bangsamoro flag, and it does so with unusual precision. Three horizontal bands of equal depth: green on top, white in the middle, red at the bottom. A golden crescent and seven-rayed star centerd on the white. A white kris laid across the red, running exactly 60% of the flag's length. The whole thing three feet by five and a half.
The act gives hex codes — #009966, #FFFFFF, #FF3333, #FFD700 — which is rare in legislation and means a flag can be checked against the law rather than against memory.
It also imposes a duty. Every Bangsamoro office, every public office, every government corporation and instrumentality, and every school, college and university in the region, public or private, is required to use and display it. So are Bangsamoro offices sitting outside the region. The Philippine flag must always fly alongside.
Why it was proposed
Article II, Section 2 of the Organic Law lets the region adopt its own flag as an expression of self-governance. This is the first act the first Parliament passed under that permission — and the specification is the point: a symbol adopted loosely becomes several symbols within a few years.
Who it affects
- Every Bangsamoro government office, including those located outside the area of autonomy.
- Public offices, government-owned or controlled corporations, and other government instrumentalities.
- Every school, college and university in the region — private ones as much as public.
- Anyone reproducing the flag, who now has an exact specification rather than an approximation.
Who would implement it
- No implementing body is named. The duty to display falls directly on each office and school.
Funding
No appropriation. The act appropriates nothing. Offices and schools required to display the flag must find the cost within their own budgets.
What changes if it becomes law
- The region has one official flag, specified to the hex code and the proportion.
- Display becomes a legal requirement for offices and schools rather than a custom.
- The Philippine flag is required alongside it, which fixes the constitutional relationship in the symbol itself.
- The seven rays give the region's seven constituent units a permanent place in its emblem.
Raised during deliberations
No published record of the debate on this measure. Parliament’s journals cover sittings up to March 2023 only, and no committee report on it has been published.
What to notice
The seven-rayed star is worth pausing on. Five provinces, one city, and the 63 barangays that voted to join from North Cotabato — seven rays, one per constituent unit. Those 63 barangays are a live political fact rather than a historical one, and the flag writes them into the region's emblem permanently.
The drafting is precise where it matters and silent where it might have mattered too. Hex codes and proportions are given, so a reproduction can be checked. But the duty to display carries no penalty, and the act legislates nothing on desecration, half-masting, or what happens to a worn flag — the questions flag laws elsewhere usually spend most of their length on. It is a specification and a requirement, not a code of respect.
One detail rewards a look at the signed copy: the final page is a color plate of the flag itself, bound into the law. The picture is part of the enacted document.