This booklet presents the voices and lived experiences of several generations of women within the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Mindanao, Philippines. It does not only capture their enduring pain and sacrifices—but also their courage, resilience, and commitment to armed struggle in the face of injustice, land dispossession, and systemic oppression. These women rose not only in defiance of marginalization but in pursuit of religious freedom, self-determination, and a just peace for the Bangsamoro.

Through participatory research, young MILF female members designed and conducted video interviews with their peers. They collected ten stories from war veterans and their daughters who reflected on their reasons for joining the MILF armed struggle, their time as women in war, their experience of gender roles and dynamics in the movement, their lessons learnt from the ongoing peace implementation process, and their aspirations for the future of their country and the coming generations.

The stories, as diverse as they are, emphasised the need to engage with the fate of female ex-combatants, a section of post-war societies that is usually forgotten and under-represented. During the MILF armed struggle for self-determination for the Muslim Bangsamoro people in the Philippine island of Mindanao, women of the movement self-organised into several civilian and military entities. One of them was the Bangsamoro Islamic Women Auxiliary Brigade (BIWAB), an all-female force that constituted a part of the MILF armed forces. BIWAB’s main mission was to ensure the safety of the combatants by attending to their medical and other basic needs, and to serve as a reserve force.