Sulat Pasa: Its Implications to Local Divorce Practice among the Sama of Tawi-Tawi, Philippines

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This study investigates Tawi-Tawi’s sulat pasa (traditional divorce paper), particularly as it relates to Sama divorcees, and if it provides a workable way to end their marriage. Through qualitative-descriptive research, it reviews the characteristics of local divorce documents, the processes involved in getting them, and their effects and implications on local divorce practice. With the institutionalization of the Code of Muslim Personal Laws of the Philippines, Muslim Filipinos should follow the divorce procedures laid in it. However, this legal hybridity is seen as inadequate because it looks insensitive to the long-standing customs and beliefs of the Muslims, jeopardizing their autonomy and self-instituting cultural traditions about divorce. Furthermore, because divorce conflicts and their resolution have been entirely integrated into the Philippine judicial system, the existing system does not provide speedy resolution to the satisfaction of the Muslim divorcee/s. Despite the implementation of the Muslim Code, the study found that Sama in Tawi-Tawi continued to present and bring their divorce cases to the traditional authority for enforcement. Given the Code’s lax implementation, local divorce cases outside Shari’ah court proceedings remain critical. The study proposes a measure through direct parliament action, such as adding a provision to the existing Bangsamoro Organic Law once the Muslim Code is upgraded, and, in the interim, this can be done through collaboration with the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos, Ministry of Indigenous Peoples Affairs, local religious and elective officials, and women’s organizations to institutionalize the traditional divorce paper as also legal, and binding taking into account issues of accessibility, affordability, practicability, and feasibility.