House OKs bill protecting rights workers on final reading

MANILA, Philippines — In an unlikely victory for rights groups — and despite President Rodrigo Duterte’s public disdain for human rights workers — the House of Representatives unanimously approved on third and final reading on Monday a bill protecting human rights advocates from attacks.

Voting 183-0, the chamber passed House Bill No. 9199, or the proposed “Human Rights Defenders Protection Law,” which would guarantee the rights and freedoms of people working to advance the cause of human rights.

To counter impunity

The bill, a consolidated version of two measures filed by Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman and the Makabayan bloc, mandates the government to “respect, protect and fulfill” the freedoms of human rights defenders, and imposes sanctions to “counter impunity.”

Lagman, who sponsored the bill on second reading last week, lauded the House for approving the measure.

“It is high time that we accord stronger legal protection to those who defend not only their own human rights and fundamental freedoms but those of others as well,” he said in a statement.

Once signed into law, the bill will create a “Human Rights Defenders Protection Committee” to be chaired by a commissioner of the Commission on Human Rights and six members who will be jointly nominated by civil society organizations.

The bill, according to Lagman, was based on the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders and the Model National Law on the Recognition and Protection of Human Rights Defenders drafted by the International Service for Human Rights.

Difficult and deadly

The work of human rights advocates in the country has become more difficult and deadly since the President took office in 2016, according to rights groups.

In his public speeches, the President has verbally attacked human rights organizations, many of whom have taken him to task for his administration’s bloody war on drugs, which has claimed thousands of lives.

Karapatan Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights said 697 human rights defenders had been killed since 2001, while Task Force Detainees of the Philippines documented 76 human rights violations affecting 333 rights workers from September 2013 to September 2016.

In the recent World Report on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders, Michael Forst, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, called on the Philippine government to “end immediately all forms of violations against human rights defenders, including extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.”

Forst urged the government to “cease immediately the public stigmatization of human rights defenders, which can incite perpetrators to act against them, and instead to publicly recognize the legitimacy and importance of their work.”