"On 27 March 2014, the President of the Philippines, Benigno Aquino III, and the Chairman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement on the Bangsamoro. Facilitated and witnessed by the Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak, this agreement marked the culmination of eighteen years of negotiations and twelve prior agreements, declarations, annexes, and addendums that had sought to bring an end to civil conflict on the island of Mindanao. Starting with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in the 1960s, various iterations of this separatist movement including the MILF and the splinter group, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), have fought to establish the Bangsamoro region of Mindanao as an independent state or an autonomous sub-state within the Philippines. During the course of what has been one of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries' most intractable conflicts, an estimated 120 000 people have been killed, countless others have suffered serious human rights violations, and since 2000 alone, an estimated 3.5 million people have been displaced from their homes"--.