An Act Providing Benefits for Bangsamoro Veteran Mujahideen and Mujahidat and Their Families, Establishing the Bangsamoro Mujahideen/mujahidat Benefits System, Appropriating Funds Therefor, and for Other Purposes

This builds a pension system for the ageing fighters of the Moro fronts, and it is an institution rather than a payment scheme.

A veteran mujahideen or mujahidat is a male or female combatant who served in the armed wing of the MNLF or MILF in the wars for self-determination, is aged 60 or above when the Act takes effect, and was discharged after at least 3 years of cumulative active service — or separated sooner through death or disability from a wound, injury, sickness or disease incurred in the line of duty. Those integrated into the Armed Forces or the police are excluded.

The non-pension benefits come first. An education benefit covers all school fees — tuition, matriculation, athletic, library, laboratory, medical, military training, diploma and graduation — at any institution authorised by the education ministry, and the veteran may renounce it in favour of one direct descendant, or a surviving spouse may claim it for a descendant of a deceased ex-combatant. Burial assistance goes to the next of kin on application within 2 years of death. Hospitalisation is free in health ministry hospitals, with financial assistance where a private hospital is more convenient.

The pensions are graded by socioeconomic status at the time of decommissioning rather than paid flat. An old-age pension runs monthly from 60 until death, and passes to a surviving spouse from the later of the veteran's death or the spouse's 60th birthday, until remarriage or death. Where a veteran leaves multiple spouses under Islamic law, the pension is divided equally among those who have reached 60, and the share of a spouse not yet eligible redounds to the eligible ones until she qualifies. A death pension covers service-related deaths, payable to the surviving spouse and unmarried minor children or, failing them, the parents. Pensions are exempt from income tax, attachment, levy and garnishment.

Running it is a Bangsamoro Mujahideen/Mujahidat Benefits System directed by a Board of Governors of 7 with 3-year terms, express fiduciary duties and stated grounds for dismissal, audited by the Commission on Audit's regional director. A Benefits Fund is established within 4 months, with powers to manage and invest it, a duty to conduct actuarial studies, a duty to determine the benefit amounts, and an annual report.

Section 4 carries the condition that distinguishes this bill from every other measure of its kind: a veteran is disqualified if found guilty by final judgment of a gross human rights violation while in the service, as certified by the Bangsamoro Human Rights Commission or the Commission on Human Rights.

The case is that men and women who spent their working lives in an armed movement reached old age with no pension, no service record and no employer — and that the peace agreement's decommissioning process reaches only those formally enrolled in it.

The bill's answer is to treat them as veterans in the ordinary sense: a pension keyed to age and service, survivor benefits, education for a descendant, burial assistance and hospital care, administered by a funded body that does actuarial work and reports annually. That is the architecture of a veterans' system, and the choice to build one rather than legislate an allowance is the bill's central argument.

This bill and the cabinet's Bill No. 44 answer the same question and barely overlap. Bill 44 requires 20 years of service between 1969 and 2014 and age 55; this one requires 3 years of cumulative service and age 60. That is the difference between a benefit for career fighters and a benefit for anyone who served — and 3 years against 20 is the single largest policy gap between any 2 competing bills in this registry. Bill 44 became BAA 57, paying a flat ₱7,000 a month to those who meet its 20-year test.

The treatment of decommissioning is the second divergence and it runs the other way from what the labels suggest. BAA 57's predecessor excluded outright anyone receiving decommissioning benefits; this bill says benefits *may* be withheld where the veteran already receives "a benefit package of the same form" through the peace process. Narrowing the exclusion to benefits of the same form, and making it discretionary, means a decommissioned combatant might still receive a pension here while getting livelihood support there. Which approach is right depends on facts about the decommissioning packages that neither bill states.

Section 4's disqualification is the provision no other veterans measure in the registry contains, and it is the seam connecting this bill to its companions. A pension withheld from a veteran convicted of a gross human rights violation, certified by the human rights commission, only means something if violations are being documented and adjudicated — which is what Bill No. 21 is for. Read alone, the clause is a gesture. Read as part of the package, it is the point at which accountability touches money.

The provision for multiple spouses is the kind of drafting that shows a bill was written for the place it applies to. Philippine pension law assumes 1 surviving spouse; the Code of Muslim Personal Laws does not, and a statute paying survivor benefits in this region either addresses that or leaves administrators to improvise. Dividing the pension equally among spouses aged 60 and over, and redirecting an ineligible spouse's share to the eligible ones until she qualifies, is a complete answer to a question most drafters would have left open.

MP Alamia filed 9 bills on 19 September 2022, the first filing day of the Second Parliament, and 5 of them are a transitional justice programme rather than 5 separate measures. Bill No. 20 protects internally displaced persons; Bill No. 21 documents the conflict's human rights violations and recognises its victims; Bill No. 22 pensions the ageing combatants; Bill No. 23 compensates the orphans of war; and Bill No. 25 creates the commission to run it. Only Bill 25 became law, as BAA 89 in January 2026. The other 4 are still at Committee Stage.