Among the beneficiaries of the Bangsamoro government’s housing program are poor families in a riverside area in Cotabato City, the capital of the autonomous region. (Photo: John Unson)
COTABATO CITY โ Officials are confronting one of the regionโs housing woes: nearly 300,000 families remain without permanent homes in the fragile but determined landscape of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Officials of the Ministry of Human Settlements and Development-BARMM say the challenge has outgrown the capacity of the regional government alone, prompting an urgent appeal for international humanitarian partners to help close a housing gap that officials describe as both a development crisis and a peace-building imperative.
โWe are optimistic that foreign humanitarian organizations will help push this forward,โ Esmael Ebrahim, the ministryโs director general, said during a dialogue Monday at the Bangsamoro regional capitol.
The scale of need is daunting. Reports gathered from local governments and regional auditors show that the ministry has completed 2,007 housing units across the autonomous region over the past seven years โ modest progress against overwhelming demand, but a foundation officials say signals what coordinated investment can achieve.
Those homes, built with the support of local governments across BARMMโs five provinces and three cities, have provided shelter for displaced and impoverished families, including former members of the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, many of whom now rely on farming and fishing to rebuild their lives.
That connection between housing and peace is central to the ministryโs vision.
For a region emerging from conflict, officials frame homes not merely as structures but as part of the architecture of stability. โThis is not a problem unique to Bangsamoro,โ Mr. Ebrahim said, placing the crisis within a broader national housing shortage. Yet in BARMM, where war and displacement have compounded poverty, the shortage carries particular urgency.
Deputy Minister Aldin Asiri said provincial offices are facilitating the construction of 3,086 additional homes. The ministry has also completed 39 livelihood training centers โ an effort to link shelter with economic survival.
The approach reflects an expansive understanding of recovery: housing, officials say, is inseparable from livelihoods.
In Lamitan, Mayor Roderick Furigay said the regional housing projects have reinforced the humanitarian efforts of the city government and the office of Mujiv Hataman, underscoring the layered cooperation now shaping post-conflict governance in the south.
Still, officials acknowledge that domestic resources alone will not meet the demand spanning Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi, as well as the cities of Marawi, Cotabato and Lamitan.
That is why officials are increasingly looking beyond the regionโs borders.
BARMM officials are appealing to foreign benefactors at a moment when the regionโs political experiment, shaped in part by peace agreements between the national government, the MNLF, and the MILF, faces a critical test: whether autonomy can deliver tangible improvements in daily life.
Housing has become one of those tests.
The former rebel fronts, whose representatives in the 80-seat Bangsamoro Parliament helped shape the region. They are part of an evolving political arrangement where peace is measured not only in cease-fires held but in homes built.
In that sense, the housing push is about more than construction.
It is an argument that rebuilding Bangsamoro requires not just roads, schools and ministries, but the dignity of a permanent roof โ and perhaps, officials hope, the support of a wider world.
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