For three years, Prof. Miriam Coronel Ferrer supported UN missions in Afghanistan, the Maldives, Iraq, and Georgia by serving as a member of the UN Standby Team of Mediators. She was the leader of the government panel that worked with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to negotiate and sign the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB).
She was the convener of UP’s Program on Peace, Democratization, and Human Rights and the director of the Third World Studies Center before retiring as a professor of politics at the University of the Philippines (UP). Additionally, she had held visiting professorships at other Asian universities.
Regarding democratization, civil society, human rights, and peace processes in the Philippines and Southeast Asia, Prof. Ferrer has authored multiple books and scholarly journal articles. In addition to being one of the 1,000 women nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005, she was one of 27 Filipinas who served as founding co-chair of the Non-State Actors Working Group of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines from 1999 to 2004.
Recent awards received by Prof. Ferrer 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 Universityβs 2015 William Masterson, SJ Award. She was listed among five Filipino women in the Forbes Asia 2024 List of 50 over 50.
She co-led the civil society-initiated formulation of the National Action Plan (NAP) on UN Security Council Resolution 1325, and she is an ardent peace advocate in her nation. In March 2010, the government of the Philippines formally accepted the Philippine NAP.
In her capacity as the head of the government panel, Professor Ferrer made history by being the first female chief negotiator to sign a significant peace deal with an armed non-state entity. She stayed in this position to supervise the CAB’s execution until June 2016, when President Simeon Benigno Aquino III’s term came to an end. “We Chose Peace: An Insider’s Account of the Bangsamoro Peace Talks,” her memoir about the negotiations, was published by the UP Press in 2024.
One of the founding members of the Southeast Asian Women Peace Mediators, Prof. Ferrer also currently serves on the board of trustees of Geneva-based Interpeace and the International Crisis Group. She is a member of the advisory boards of the Negotiations Strategies Institute at Harvard University, the Peace Treaty Initiative of the Institute for Integrated Transitions in Barcelona, and the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders in New York.