Miriam Coronel Ferrer
Miriam Coronel Ferrer is a Senior Fellow in UNIDIR’s Integrated Approaches Programme. She is a founding member of the Southeast Asian Women Peace Mediators. She was a member of the UN Standby Team of Mediators for three years, where she did mediation support work for UN missions in countries like Afghanistan, Maldives, Iraq and Georgia. Previously, she headed the government panel that negotiated and signed the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
A retired professor of politics at the University of the Philippines (UP), Miriam once served as director of the Third World Studies Centre and convener of UP’s Program on Peace, Democratization and Human Rights. She has also served as a visiting professor at several Asian universities.
Currently, Miriam sits as a member of the board of trustees of the International Crisis Group, and Interpeace in Geneva. She sits on the advisory boards of the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders in New York, the Peace Treaty Initiative of the Institute for Integrated Transitions in Barcelona, and the Negotiations Strategies Institute at Harvard University.
Awards Miriam has received include the 2024 Rotary Peace Award given in the Philippines, the 2024 Gawad Kapayapaan award given by the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace Reconciliation and Unity, the 2023 Ramon Magsaysay Award given in Asia by the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation, the 2015 Hilary Rodham Clinton Award for Advancing Women in Peace and Security given by Georgetown University Institute for Women, Peace and Security, and Xavier University’s 2015 William Masterson, SJ Award. She was listed among five Filipino women in the Forbes Asia 2024 List of 50 over 50.
Miriam has published several books and academic journal articles on democratization, civil society, human rights and peace processes in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. She was the founding co-chair of the Non-State Actors Working Group of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines from 1999-2004, and was one of 27 Filipinas among the 1,000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize nominated in 2005.
An active peace advocate in her country, Miriam co-led the civil society-initiated drafting of the National Action Plan (NAP) on UN Security Council Resolution 1325. The Philippine NAP was formally adopted by the government in March 2010.
As the chair of the government panel, Miriam became the first woman in the world to sign a major peace agreement with a non-state armed group as government chief negotiator. She continued in this capacity to oversee the CAB’s implementation until the end of President Simeon Benigno Aquino III’s term in June 2016. Her memoir on the talks, We Chose Peace: An Insider’s Account of the Bangsamoro Peace Talks, was released by the UP Press in 2024.