AHRC Taps Alumni in Formation of Human Rights Agenda

Atty. Carlos Medina, Jr., AHRC executive director

The Ateneo Human Rights Center (AHRC) is preparing a human rights agenda that it will present to presidential candidates next year. To strengthen this further, the AHRC decided to tap into the knowledge and experience of its alumni through a conference at the Ateneo School of Law in Makati City on 12 December 2009. With the support of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty, it brought together close to 40 former interns to discuss law and policy reforms and to talk about other avenues for human rights work.

The interns presented three papers on peripheral human rights issues they hope to make more mainstream: the party list system and gender equality, property rights of indigenous people and mandatory legal aid service. With the present party list system, the first paper argued that the representation of marginalized sectors in Congress is limited to groups economically constrained. However, the paper states that this does not provide a voice for other sectors that do not fall under this category such as the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. The paper proposed the need to amend the law to broaden representation and to further democratize the decision-making process in government.

The next paper discussed strengthening the property rights of indigenous peoples (IP). One proposal is for a review of the system appointments to the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP). The formation of a group to monitor appointments to the NCIP, in the same way that law groups evaluate appointments to the Supreme Court, may also be considered. It is hoped that this way, NCIP commissioners will really have the best interests of the IPs in mind.

Lastly, the interns looked into the Supreme Court Rule that all practicing lawyers must serve a mandatory 60 hours per year of free legal aid. While some argued that the court cannot legislate compassion, others believed it could be worthwhile. They all agreed however that the implementing rules and regulations must allow for transparency, appropriate grievance mechanisms and adequate safeguards against corruption.

Aside from using the policy papers and inputs gathered from the conference in creating part of its human rights agenda, the AHRC will also use these to produce legal reform papers. With these, it hopes to lobby government to look into the issues raised at the conference.

The Internship Program of the Ateneo Human Rights Center (AHRC) has been running since 1987. The program has produced close to 700 interns who advocate for human rights.