Groups drawing rights agenda for candidates

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—Human rights advocates on Wednesday drew up an agenda for rights-based governance that they want national and local candidates to adopt in their platforms or to guide the next administration in framing a national human rights action plan.

Max de Mesa, chair of Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (Pahra), said the agenda was approved in a forum held at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the 1986 People Power Revolution.

Pahra would write each candidate formally about their human rights agendas, Rose Trajano, the group’s secretary general, said on Wednesday.

The group would also disseminate the document online, through social media, and would ask local human rights organizations to discuss their agendas in the provinces.

This way, Trajano said, the group can muster a lobby force to compel the candidates to make human rights as part of their platforms.

De Mesa said this agenda “helps ensure that economic growth is more sustainable and inclusive, criminal justice more effective, women and girls more empowered, and freedom and democracy more robust.”

He said the country’s next leaders and the people in general “must progressively struggle for greater freedoms and fuller enjoyment of our rights.”

Advocates also expressed “great concern” over the making of the Second Philippine Human Rights Plan that the Presidential Human Rights Committee presented in November last year, Trajano said. Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon