Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 57
In forceCabinet measureAn Act Providing for Financial Assistance to Bangsamoro Mujahideen and Creating the Office of the Bangsamoro Mujahideen Under Special Circumstance, Defining Its Basic Organizational Structure, Providing Funds Therefor, and for Other Purposes
A qualified Mujahideen receives ₱7,000 a month for life — paid as a single ₱84,000 lump sum in the first year of implementation, then quarterly thereafter. A dedicated office, the OBMUSC, validates claimants, keeps the register, and must review whether ₱7,000 is still enough every 3 years.
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Signed into law and operative unless later amended or repealed.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 pays a pension. A Mujahideen of the MILF or the MNLF who fought for at least 20 years between 1969 and 2014, who is now a senior citizen or permanently disabled, and whose income is under ₱250,000 a year, receives ₱7,000 every month for the rest of their life.
The first year comes as a single payment of ₱84,000 covering the whole 12 months; after that it is released quarterly. The benefit is lifetime and non-transferrable — it stops at death and does not pass to a family.
To run it the act creates an office inside the Office of the Chief Minister, the Office of the Bangsamoro Mujahideen Under Special Circumstance, headed by a Director II and split into 3 sections: one that processes and validates claims, one that handles availment, and one that monitors and evaluates. It must keep an updated register of who qualifies, and every 3 years it must review whether ₱7,000 is still enough to live on.
Why it was proposed
The act's policy section puts it as the Bangsamoro Government's duty to see that every Bangsamoro has basic necessities and equal opportunities, with economic mechanisms tailored to its people's needs. The specific gap it fills is a generation of combatants who gave two decades to the struggle and arrived at old age or permanent disability with no income and no pension of any kind.
Who it affects
- Male and female members of the MILF and MNLF — the act says both expressly — who meet all three tests: 20 years of meaningful participation between 1969 and 2014, senior citizen status or permanent disability, and an annual income no higher than ₱250,000.
- Anyone whose disability is on the act's list: partial covers the loss of use of a finger, arm, foot, toe, hand, leg, one or both ears, hearing, or the sight of one eye; total covers blindness in both eyes, the loss of two limbs at or above the ankle or wrists, paralysis of two limbs, and brain injury causing incurable incapacity.
- The Central Committees of the MILF and the MNLF, which supply the list of qualified and validated beneficiaries and so decide, in practice, who gets on it.
- Families of beneficiaries, who inherit nothing: the pension is non-transferrable.
Who would implement it
- Office of the Bangsamoro Mujahideen Under Special Circumstance (OBMUSC), headed by a Director II appointed by the Chief Minister for 3 years
- Office of the Chief Minister, which holds operational supervision and control over the OBMUSC
- A technical working group formed by the OCM with the Committee on Social Services and Development, which had 90 days from effectivity to issue implementing rules
- The Central Committees of the MILF and the MNLF, which validate the beneficiary list
Funding
Carries an appropriation. ₱500,000,000 appropriated for initial implementation upon effectivity. Continuing costs are carried in the annual General Appropriations Act of the Bangsamoro under the Office of the Chief Minister. At ₱84,000 a head in the first year, the initial appropriation is the size of roughly 5,950 full-year pensions — the act does not state how many people are expected to qualify.
What changes if it becomes law
- A lifetime pension exists where there was none: ₱7,000 a month, ₱84,000 in the first year.
- A dedicated office is created inside the Office of the Chief Minister to validate, pay and monitor.
- For the first time there is a register of qualified Mujahideen, built with the MILF and MNLF central committees.
- The adequacy of the amount is put on a three-year review cycle rather than left to erode.
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 eligibility gate is the whole act. Three tests have to be met at once — 20 years of participation inside a fixed 1969–2014 window, old age or a listed disability, and an income ceiling of ₱250,000 — and the act never says how any of it is proved. It routes validation to the Central Committees of the MILF and the MNLF instead. That is a practical answer to a hard problem: no state record exists of who fought. It also means a former combatant's pension depends on a list drawn up by a political organization, and the act provides no appeal if a name is left off it.
The money is worth doing arithmetic on. ₱500 million is the initial appropriation, and the first-year benefit is ₱84,000 a head, which funds roughly 5,950 people for that year. The act does not estimate the eligible population, so whether that figure is generous or thin is unanswerable from the text alone — and the answer decides whether this reads as a pension scheme or as a pilot.
Two smaller things. The benefit stops at death and cannot pass to a widow or children, which for a household living on ₱7,000 a month is a cliff rather than a step. And the act creates no offence — there is no penalty for a fraudulent claim, only validation standing between the register and the money.