04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly [87] Article 34(1) of the Statute of the ICJ provides: "Only states may be parties in cases before the Court." [88] See note 18. [89] Memorandum of Respondents dated 24 September 2008, p. 7. [90] People v. Vera, G.R. No. 26539, 28 February 1990, 182 SCRA 800, 809. [91] TSN, 29 August 2008, pp. 154-155. [92] The President's Memorandum of Instructions dated 8 September 2003 reiterated verbatim paragraph 1 of the Memorandum of Instructions from the President dated 1 March 2001. [93] Paragraph 4 on Concepts and Principles of the MOA-AD provides: "Both Parties acknowledge that the right to self-governance of the Bangsamoro people is rooted on ancestral territoriality exercised originally under the suzerain authority of their sultanates and the Pat a Pangampong ku Ranaw. The Moro sultanates were states or karajaan/kadatuan resembling a body politic endowed with all the elements of nation-state in the modern sense. As a domestic community distinct from the rest of the national communities, they have a definite historic homeland. They are the "First Nation" with defined territory and with a system of government having entered into treaties of amity and commerce with foreign nations. The Parties concede that the ultimate objective of entrenching the Bangsamoro homeland as a territorial space is to secure their identity and posterity, to protect their property rights and resources as well as to establish a system of governance suitable and acceptable to them as distinct dominant people." (Emphasis supplied) [94] See Story of the Assembly of First Nations, http://www.afn.ca/article.asp?id=59. [95] TSN, 29 August 2008, pp. 718 and 721. [96] Paragraphs 1 and 3 on Concepts and Principles of the MOA-AD; see notes 49 and 50; Paragraph 1 on Territory of the MOA-AD provides: "The Bangsamoro homeland and historic territory refer to the land mass as well as the maritime, terrestrial, fluvial and alluvial domains, and the aerial domain, the atmospheric space above it, embracing the Mindanao-Sulu-Palawan geographic region. However, delimitations are contained in the agreed Schedules (Categories)." [97] Paragraph 7 on Concepts and Principles of the MOA-AD provides: "Vested property rights upon the entrenchment of the BJE shall be recognized and respected subject to paragraph 9 of the strand on Resources." [98] Paragraph 7 on Resources of the MOA-AD provides: "The legitimate grievances of the Bangsamoro people arising from any unjust dispossession of their territorial and proprietary rights, customary land tenures, or their marginalization shall be acknowledged. Whenever restoration is no longer possible, the GRP shall take effective measures or adequate reparation collectively elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/47263 118/203