On June 3, the House of Representatives
adopted House Bill No. 9199, also known as the Human Rights Defenders Bill, on
its third and final reading. The bill proposes, among
others, the recognition of human rights defenders and their work, obligations
of State actors towards them, and the creation of a Human Rights Defenders
Protection Committee. The process for the adoption of this bill started in 2007, and many human rights defenders, lawmakers and organisations participated in the drafting process and campaigned tirelessly for its adoption.
The Observatory welcomes the passing of
this long overdue bill by the House of Representatives, which responds to the
worrisome situation of human rights defenders in the Philippines, and conforms
to various international human rights instruments, including the United Nations Declaration on the
Rights of Human Rights Defenders adopted in 1998.
House Bill No. 9199 still needs to be
complemented by the adoption of a similar bill in the Senate, where Senator Leila
de Lima filed Bill No. 1699 in February 2018. This bill is still pending at
the committee level. Senator de Lima has been arbitrarily detained since
February 24, 2017, on trumped-up accusations that directly aim at sanctioning
her human rights activities.
At the end of May 2019, upon returning from an international
mission to the Philippines, the Observatory expressed its utmost concern over the ongoing repression of human rights defenders
and the further deterioration of the environment in which they operate. The
Observatory warned that President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on human rights
defenders was likely to intensify after his candidates won the May 13 elections
for Senate.
In the Philippines, human rights defenders
are often criminalised and tagged as “terrorists” or “enemies of the State” as
a means to encourage counterinsurgency programs and violent attacks against
them. Since the election of Rodrigo Duterte in May 2016, scores of human rights
defenders and human rights lawyers have been killed for exposing human rights
violations and demanding accountability. UN Special Rapporteurs have also been repeatedly slandered and threatened,
and no mandate-holder has been allowed to visit the country in an official
capacity since the election of President Duterte.
Concerned with the sharp deterioration of the human rights situation, in a June
7 press release eleven UN human rights experts
called on the Human Rights Council to establish an independent investigation into human rights violations committed in the
Philippines.
“Instead of
attacking human rights defenders and UN human rights mechanisms, the
authorities should comply with UN instruments, in particular the UN Declaration
on Human Rights Defenders”, the Observatory said today. “The adoption of a human rights defenders protection law
would recognise human rights defenders as key partners of democracy and rule of
law that need to be protected, in a context of increasingly shrinking space for
civil society in the country”, the Observatory concluded.
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