Any member of several Muslim peoples living in the southern Philippines.
The Moros, who constitute about 5% of the Philippine population, are not ethnically different from other Filipinos, but, with a separate Islamic faith and local cultures, they have been the object of prejudice and neglect. They have a centuries-long history of conflict with ruling powers: first with Roman Catholic Spanish colonialists (16th–19th century), later with U.S. occupation troops, and finally with the independent Philippine government. Although the Moro National Liberation Front
which espoused Moro separatism and led a violent insurgency in the late 1960s and '70s
split into factions at the end of the 1970s, the insurgency continued. Provisions for the expansion of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao , established in the late 1980s, were included in a 1996 treaty, but some separatists continue to hold out for complete independence.