An Act to Institutionalize the Use of People’s Alternative System in Addressing Disputes (Pasad) in the Bangsamoro and to Establish the Office for Pasad, Providing Funds Therefor and for Other Purposes

This institutionalises a community dispute-resolution system called PASAD — the People’s Alternative System in Addressing Disputes — and builds an office to run it in every province and municipality of the region.

The purpose section states the aim plainly: that people take genuine steps to resolve disputes before certain court actions are begun, and that parties keep the autonomy to settle their differences by a process they agree on. Parties may agree that a dispute is resolved by PASAD; the Ministry of Public Order and Safety then facilitates the constitution of the PASAD Provider the parties choose, and appoints one itself if the parties cannot agree. Providers must be neutral, preferably accredited by MPOS, at least 30 years old, and unrelated by blood or marriage to either party within the third degree.

The process is bounded by confidentiality, with stated exceptions and a waiver mechanism, and by a right of recusal. Where it succeeds, the parties sign a written settlement agreement, the Provider authenticates it and gives them copies, and they may deposit it with the appropriate office where one of them resides. If it has to be enforced, a party may petition a court and may ask the Ministry for help enforcing it.

Section 19 is the section that makes this a Bangsamoro law rather than a generic mediation statute. The Ministry must ensure the PASAD procedure on conciliation, peacemaking and amicable settlement accords with Islamic law — sulh, the tradition of reconciliation — and must also promote the traditional methods used by non-Moro indigenous peoples.

The structure is a Regional Office for PASAD under MPOS, with a secretariat under an Executive Director and three departments: Finance and Administration; Training, Accreditation and Promotion; and Policy, Compliance and Monitoring. Below it sits a Provincial Office under a Provincial Administrator in every BARMM province including the Special Geographic Area, and a Municipal Coordinating Office in every cluster or municipality.

The stated purpose is speedy, impartial and inexpensive justice through early dispute resolution, and — in the bill’s own phrase — justpeace and sustainable development in the region.

The unstated context is what makes it serious. Formal courts are distant, slow and expensive for most of this region, and disputes that go unresolved here do not simply persist: they escalate into rido, the clan feuding that is among the largest causes of violence and displacement in the Bangsamoro. Sulh and traditional settlement are how most disputes have always actually been resolved. The bill is an attempt to give that a statutory footing, a trained and accredited cadre, and an office structure reaching down to the municipality.

The most consequential thing in this bill is Section 19, and it is one paragraph long. It requires that the whole procedure accord with Islamic law on conciliation and peacemaking, and separately that traditional methods among non-Moro indigenous peoples be promoted. That is the difference between a mediation statute and a Bangsamoro one — it takes sulh, which is how disputes here have in practice always been settled, and gives it a place inside the formal system rather than beside it.

What the bill does not do is make PASAD compulsory. The purpose section says people should take genuine steps to resolve disputes "before certain court actions are instituted", but the operative provision begins with the parties agreeing. No category of dispute is required to go through PASAD first, and no court is directed to send anything to it. Compared with the barangay justice system under national law, which does bar certain suits until conciliation has been attempted, this is an invitation rather than a gate — and the gap between the aspiration in Section 2 and the mechanism in Section 8 is where the bill will be tested.

The funding clause is the practical worry. An office in every province and every municipality is a real payroll, and the Act deliberately takes no money in its first year, deferring everything to the following budget. A dispute-resolution system that exists in law and not yet in the municipalities is worse than none, because parties will have been told to use something that has no one to staff it.

On its progress: filed March 2023, First Reading May 2023, and referred to the Committees on the Bangsamoro Justice System and on Finance in October 2024, where the index leaves it.