This think piece article forms part of the Bangsamoro Governance and Policy Insights Series released by the Ateneo Bangsamoro Initiative of the School of Government, Ateneo de Manila University. The series is intended to contribute to the ongoing discourse on governance and development in the Bangsamoro region.
Not since World War II has any city in the Philippines, or in Southeast Asia, experienced destruction on the scale of Marawi City. Nine years ago, on May 23, 2017, an armed conflict erupted between the Philippine Government forces and an ISIS-linked militant group. The siege lasted five months, until October 17, 2017. The terrorists, including the Maute and Abu Sayyaf groups, quickly took control of Marawi City, prompting then President Rodrigo Duterte to impose martial law and suspend the writ of habeas corpus on the entire island of Mindanao.
According to UN-OCHA, ICRC and MC data, the conflict resulted in the total destruction of civilian infrastructure, damage to personal property, and loss of lives. Massive civilian displacement followed: within a month, 73,000 families, or 360,000 individuals, were forced to leave their homes and businesses. The conflict also left 1,100 people dead and 300 missing.
Almost a decade later, residents from the 24 most affected barangays in Marawi City, including the city’s commercial center, are now internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have not been able to fully recover, and most have yet to return to their homes. Based on government data, more than 9,000 property owners have suffered the complete loss of their structures.
The heart of the once-thriving city now lies in complete ruin. Although we can see government infrastructure being rebuilt and some residents returning to rebuild their homes, it will take generations for Marawi to heal. And with the destruction of the city came the prolonged suffering of its people and the erosion of trust between them and the state. To restore this trust, Marawi’s recovery lies not in physical rebuilding alone, but in the realm of restorative justice—specifically through the delivery of reparations under the Marawi Siege Victims Compensation Act of 2022 (RA 11696). The law, enacted on April 13, 2022, recognized the right of IDPs to reparation for the harm and damage they suffered due to the war. It also reflects our country’s commitment to its obligations under International Humanitarian Law.
Compensation should not be understood as an act of generosity by the State. It is part of the State’s obligation, a form of reparation, to recognize harm, restore dignity, uphold human rights, and strengthen lasting peace. Reparations are not simply financial transactions; they are democratic commitments that rebuild trust between citizens and institutions. It is a powerful tool within transitional justice because it shows victims that they matter and that their suffering is recognized and acted upon, helping them recover and rebuild their lives in a tangible manner.
I did not always see it this way. When I began this work, compensation felt to me like a legal abstraction—a mandate to fulfill, a budget to release. It was only through sitting with survivors and hearing their testimonies during hearings that its deeper meaning, as an act of restoring human dignity, became clear to me.
Section 2, Declaration of State Policy, of RA 11696 incorporates Pillar 2, Right to Reparation, of International Humanitarian Law as an instrument of the Transitional Justice Mechanism for civilian victims of war. Thus:
It is the declared policy of the State to provide compensation or reparation to the internally displaced persons (IDPs) of the 2017 Marawi Siege whose damaged or demolished properties and possessions cannot be recovered.
The State shall also fulfill its obligations under international human rights and humanitarian laws; thus, it recognizes the basic principles and guidelines on the right to remedy and reparation for victims of gross human rights violations.
The State is likewise obligated to recognize the essence of providing reparation and compensation for persons and families whose rights were violated and whose economic, social, and cultural rights were unfulfilled as a result of armed conflicts.
The law and its implementing rules and regulations (IRR), adopted on May 19, 2023, established the Marawi Compensation Board (MCB) as an independent quasi-judicial body responsible for evaluating and awarding claims related to the loss of lives, the destruction of residential and commercial structures, and damage to personal property.
The MCB is a transitional justice mechanism, and it is unique in that it does not focus on punishment. Instead, it seeks to build a peaceful and stable society by addressing both individual accountability and collective healing, aiming for a sustainable peace that acknowledges the complexities of past injustice.
The MCB IRR details a claims process that emphasizes transparency and fairness, requiring substantial evidence for eligibility while offering a summary procedure to expedite resolutions for internally displaced persons. Ultimately, the rules serve as a vital mechanism for reparation and justice, ensuring that victims receive the financial support they need to recover from the economic and social devastation caused by the conflict.
The trajectory of this work tells its own story. By March 2025, two years into our mandate, the MCB had disbursed compensation to more than 1,300 IDPs amounting to Php 1.8 billion, evaluated and assessed 2,200 structures, approved at least Php 2.3 billion in claims, and secured Php 5.3 billion in funding from the Department of Budget and Management to sustain the program. As of June 30, 2026, that trajectory has grown considerably: the MCB has awarded monetary compensation totaling Php 6.1 billion to 3,699 claimants. This constitutes 25% of the 14,495 claimants who filed their claims from July 3, 2023 to July 4, 2024, totaling an estimated Php 36 billion in claims against the government. Of these, 3,170 claimants have been transferred, under the revised IRR, to the National Housing Authority (NHA) to speed up payments. The MCB aims to finish its mandate by June 30, 2028, and to ensure that no one is left behind—working toward a healing, just, safe, and dignified Kambalingan, the Meranaw term for homecoming, for Marawi’s displaced.
Building the Institution: The First Ninety Days
Before I accepted the position, I had read that the first ninety days of a chief executive officer can determine whether an organization succeeds or fails. That was a daunting thought, given that we were building an office from nothing. For three months, we had no salary, no budget, no office, and no staff to speak of. We traveled back and forth between Marawi and Manila at our own expense, operating in an unstable region marked by a weakened rule of law and decades of conflict, both vertical and horizontal.
As a leader, I understood the imperative to act fast. We adopted and implemented a 90-day strategic action plan, and within that window we laid the foundation of the MCB: we secured our office, and the Department of Budget and Management approved our initial staffing and budgetary requirements. This was followed by numerous consultations with stakeholders—civil society, barangay officials, the academe, professionals, bakwits, claimants, and others. We then drafted and promulgated our implementing rules, regulations, and procedures, established systems across every level of our work, and developed our Manual of Operations. On July 4, 2024, in under six months, starting from scratch, we began receiving claims. Four months later, on November 20, 2024, the MCB paid its first compensation for claims involving missing persons and legally presumed dead.
Behind this compensation process lies a commitment to protecting the integrity of the fund and the process itself. Healing and rebuilding Marawi is a comprehensive approach where engaging with stakeholders is key to gaining their trust, participation, and support for the process. The MCB entered into several partnerships and collaborations with relevant institutions on different aspects of the compensation process, from the grassroots to the regional, national, and international levels.
Open and Transparent Communication with Claimants
As a leader, responsibility ultimately rests with you. I understood that even a mistake made by the most junior member of staff would be mine to answer for before the public. Claimants had waited seven years, and their expectations were high. Along the way, issues surfaced—concerns about payment rates, internal disagreements within our collegial board, problems with queuing and processing. We improved the system as we went, mindful that the MCB exists because of the claimants, not despite them.
Our answer to these challenges was information, transparency, and an effective feedback mechanism. We made sure accurate information reached the public and that we listened at every level of our work—through information campaigns in temporary and permanent shelters, social media, our website, text and email, and on-site verification of claim status. We held regular dialogues with stakeholders and the media on the progress of the compensation process, and we made it a point to respond to every inquiry, documenting the feedback we received to improve the system further. We could not effectively lead an institution without knowing whether the systems we had put in place were truly working for the claimants.
When certain concerns could no longer be adequately addressed through the channels available to us in Marawi City, I formally requested the Congressional Oversight Committee to convene a hearing. That hearing, held in May 2024, ran for nearly four hours. I asked the Secretariat to invite civil society organizations and claimant representatives, including those who had been most critical of the MCB. By the end of the session, the MCB had addressed every issue raised, and claimants left better informed.
Building a Culture of Integrity
The success of any compensation process rests on its integrity. Hiring the right people for the delicate work of delivering justice to the IDPs required a rigorous selection process, where only the competent and qualified were brought on board. I personally interviewed every staff member before appointment, less to assess their credentials than to understand their values—because for me, integrity, more than education or competence, is the foundation the MCB was built on. I had to walk the talk and be a role model for the office. Over two years, we mentored young lawyers, engineers, accountants, and civil servants—for many of them, the MCB was their first job.
Leading with Understanding, Empathy, and Compassion
The devastation of the siege touched the psychosocial, mental, and economic lives of every IDP. The extent of this became clear to me during adjudication, as I listened to their stories of life before, during, and after the siege—thousands of narratives now preserved in the MCB’s stenographic notes.
One mother, searching for her missing son, told us:
He went to Marawi to earn a decent living as a laborer, only to see his body in the news, killed by terrorists. It is very painful for me because among my children, he was the kindest. I visit his grave regularly. My being here is not about money, but rather to seek justice for the senseless death of my son. In this way, we honor him by making sure that his death is recognized by the government, and that we may finally lay him to rest.
She, like many families, had not been able to properly bury her son. For them, the MCB offered a form of closure—a space where they were treated with honor and respect.
There were countless other stories of loss: heads of households who once owned thriving businesses, now driving motorcycles for a living out of a thirty-square-meter temporary shelter; a doctor who had run a five-story hospital, now paralyzed by the siege; a mother of five sons, all killed after they joined the extremists at ground zero, who wept with guilt at having been powerless to stop them; wives and sisters of slain extremists, asking the MCB to compensate their dead husbands and brothers all the same.
No amount of compensation can ever repay a mother’s grief for a missing child, just as no amount can restore the destroyed memories once held within an IDP’s home. But leading with understanding, empathy, and compassion helped create a collaborative space where stakeholders worked together toward a shared, peaceful future. Listening with understanding, and genuinely caring for the welfare of the IDPs, built trust—not only in our office, but among the people we served. It was this trust that allowed us to deliver our mandate efficiently, effectively, and on time.
Lessons Learned in Leading Community Healing and Rebuilding
When we took our oath on January 30, 2023, the MCB was composed of nine members, five of whom were women, including myself as Chairperson. From the start, I knew we stood on strong footing because we were women-led. Research on post-conflict recovery bears this out: greater representation of women at the helm of peacebuilding significantly improves the odds of a successful and sustainable recovery, because women’s perspectives and experiences are often best suited to address the diverse needs of communities.
Women leaders, I believe, have proven that in healing and rebuilding communities affected by armed conflict, the focus must go beyond infrastructure. It also means repairing the social fabric of the community, closing the deep-seated wounds left by the war, restoring citizens’ trust in their government, and ensuring the dignified return of the people to their community. All of this contributes to a just, sustainable, and durable peace in our land.
For me, institutionalization is the key—especially in our conflict-stricken region, where instability is a daily reality.
Thus, we embedded strong, resilient systems that can stand on their own—systems that are not dependent on personality, but are rooted in principles, clear processes, and accountability, and people who are molded by the integrity and ethics of public service and professionalism.
This is why we worked hard to put those systems in place. The goal was always to build something that would endure—an institution that functions effectively, even in our absence.
On a personal note, I started as an activist—I stood at Mendiola Bridge several times in the 1990s. I have served government for twenty-five years, half of my lifetime: first as a Senior State Solicitor at the Office of the Solicitor General for almost fifteen (15) years, then as Assistant Regional Cabinet Secretary for the Department of Education-ARMM (on-detail from OSG), then as a Commissioner of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission, as a Member of Parliament in the Bangsamoro Transition Authority where I principally authored several bills including the creation of the Bangsamoro Women Commission and the creation of the Special Committee on Marawi, and finally as Chairperson and CEO of the MCB. A decade of that was spent passionately serving the Bangsamoro—the most beautiful journey of my life as a public servant, even as it meant long stretches away from my children and husband, often feeling like an absentee mother. But the reward, I remind myself, lies in the journey and purpose of the work itself; the time I gave to the OSG, ARMM, the BTC, the BTA, and the MCB had to be meaningful, given what it cost my family.
When I left government on March 24, 2026, I hoped that the people, structures, and systems that I helped institutionalize in the MCB would continue to thrive and flourish.
Leadership changes, but institutions must remain strong. In the end, it is the institution—not any one individual—that will continue to serve the people, deliver justice, and help communities heal and rebuild after war.
Atty. Maisara Dandamun-Latiph is a Contributor at the Ateneo School of Government Policy Center and the former Chairperson of the Marawi Compensation Board (2023–2025). The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ateneo de Manila University.