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Issue Number 32, October 2009
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Kapatiran Issue
No. 32, October 2009
NEW ZEALAND HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION PROJECT IN
PHILIPPINES
Position Statement on the Philippines Human
Rights Community Development Project of the Commission on
Human Rights for the Philippines (CHRP) and NZ Human
Rights Commission (HRC)
by Auckland Philippines Solidarity (APS), Wellington Kiwi
Pinoy (WKP), Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa
(PSNA), and Migrante Aotearoa
This was sent to the New Zealand Human Rights
Commission in July 2009. Ed.
In May 2007 trade unions and human rights activists in
New Zealand staged a series of high profile protests
together with Filipino activist Dennis Maga to denounce
the wave of extra-judicial killings, enforced
disappearances, unjust detention and other human rights
abuses in the Philippines. The protests, launched at the
time when Philippines President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
was in New Zealand, highlighted the growing international
condemnation against the State-spon-sored atrocities.
After lobbying efforts of concerned groups and
individuals in New Zealand, the then Prime Minister Helen
Clark was compelled to raise the issue of human rights
breaches during her meeting with Arroyo. The Government
of New Zealand pledged aid to address the human rights
crisis in the Philippines through three year bilateral
project between the CHRP and the NZHRC aimed at:
> strengthening the ability of
indigenous communities to identify and confront human
rights abuses
> encouraging the integration of
human rights into the practices of the Police and
Military in those communities and
> supporting the CHRP to develop,
implement and evaluate a human rights community
development approach in indigenous communities that can
be extended to, and adapted for other communities.
At this stage, as the NZHRC-CHRP project is about to
commence, we would like to share the following
comments/feedback to the NZHRC for its evaluation
purposes:
1/ On The Involvement/Non-involvement Of
Peoples’ Organisations/Civil Society Organisations
We appreciate the efforts of the NZHRC to address the
human rights crisis in the Philippines and to involve us
in the project by opening communication channels and
inviting us to the series of roundtable forums. In regard
to the involvement of people’s organisations
(referred to as civil society organisations or CSOs by
the CHRP and NZHRC) in the Philippines, efforts to
consult important groups that have been at the forefront
of the campaign to defend human rights (Karapatan,
Indigenous People’s Human Rights Watch, Cordillera
Human Rights Alliance and others) mainly came from the
NZHRC. Most of the groups felt that the CHRP was not keen
to involve them at all. The head of the project in the
Philippines appears to be a defender of the military and
consciously excluded CSOs from the project.
2/ On The Selection Of Communities
Considering that the project was conceptualised at the
height of international protests against political
repression in the Philippines, APS, PSNA, WKP, Migrante
Aotearoa and human rights groups in the Philippines
expected the project areas to be those where numerous
cases of human rights abuses have been reported. The
three indigenous communities selected were the Kankan-ey
of Kibungan in Benguet, the Higaonon of Esperanza in
Agusan del Sur and the Sama Dilaut or Bajdao/Bajau of
Zamboanga and of Basilan. The human rights group in
Cordillera noted that Kibungan and Bakun (in
Benguet) are mining application sites and that there
is a growing military presence and human rights
violations in Mankayan, another mining affected area in
Benguet. We believe the project could have been more
valuable if the project holders selected mining affected
and militarised communities and focused more on
addressing civil and political rights violations.
3/ On The Project Focus And Implementation
The communities selected for the project were among the
poorest and neediest in terms of livelihood
opportunities. We are aware that the focus of the project
for the Kibungan community is to address the
socio-economic needs of the community, i.e. livelihood
projects, road construction etc. We ask:
How has the project addressed political repression in the
communities as raised during the protests in NZ? How has
the project addressed human rights abuses involving
police and military forces in the communities?
Is the project more focused on addressing the
socio-economic needs of the IP communities? If so, this
appears to be another foreign-funded socio-economic
project that spoon feeds the needs of the poor
(livelihood, school building, clinics) while failing to
address the root causes of impoverishment (i.e. lack of
ownership and access to resources and the political
marginalisation of indigenous communities) and the issues
of political conflict in the communities (i.e.
land/ancestral domain issues, military threats/abuses
against indigenous peoples and their advocates). There is
also the question of sustainability of these
socio-economic projects after the project expires at the
end of three years.
Some comments on the project from our members and
partners: “To be honest, this is not the project
that we are wanting since the focus is not on preventing
human rights violations, it seems like it is just your
typical aid project that is addressing the lack of
provision of social services by the State in indigenous
communities”…. “NZHRC, as a
quasi-governmental organisation, needs to be careful
about how dirty they get their hands. They also need some
way of monitoring whether what they are doing is any good
at all or is making any impact. Finally it seems to me
that when NZ has made any impact internationally, it's
been about standing up to bullies, not working with them,
which is what this looks like to me. It's a bit sad
that this is the net result of the letters we wrote
to Clark and protests about human rights abuses in the
Philippines”… “On one hand we are glad
that protests by the people of New Zealand compelled the
Clark administration to add its voice to the growing
international pressure for the Arroyo government to stop
the killings and other abuses. On the other hand, we are
wary that the Arroyo government can showcase the project
to boast to the international community that it has
indeed done something to address the human rights
crisis”.
Concluding Notes
We have no doubt that the selected communities are happy
to receive pigs, better roads and other improvements to
their livelihood. Our solidarity with the Filipino
people, though, is a clamour for justice for the victims
of human rights abuses and to bring to an end, the State
policy of political repression and the systematic denial
of social, economic and cultural rights. Beyond the three
year NZHRC and CHRP project, we are hopeful that the
NZHRC will continue to:
Monitor the national human rights situation including
massive displacement due to continuing hamletting of IP
communities by the military.
Raise concern on the relentless human rights abuses
including the extra-judicial killings of environment and
IP advocates and continuing atrocities involving police
and military forces.
Support the call for the NZ government to withdraw aid to
the Philippine police and military forces, which
implement the state policy of political repression. #
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