In 2014, the government of the Philippines signed a peace deal with Muslim separatists in the southern part of the country known as the Bangsamoro. The agreement brought a gradual end to a conflict that had killed more than 120,000 people over decades.

This week on The Negotiators, we hear from the government official who navigated the talks, Miriam Coronel-Ferrer. She was the first woman ever to lead a negotiation with an armed rebel group—the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. 

Coronel-Ferrer was a political science professor before going to work for the government in 2010. One thing that made her effective at negotiating with the rebels was that she herself had been an anti-government activist during the era of Filipino strongman Ferdinand Marcos.