 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||
 |
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
||||||||
Religious of the Good Shepherd Retreat House
Tagaytay City
19 June 2010
delivered by
LEILA M. DE LIMA
Chairperson
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
A few days ago, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) issued a report relating to food security. A number of the findings of that report are worth mentioning.
The report estimates that over the next ten years, the average prices of wheat and coarse grain will rise by 15-40 percent. Vegetable oils are projected to rise by more than 40 percent. And dairy prices are expected to increase by 16-45 percent.
While the report projects that world food production will manage to keep up with growing demand, it notes that recent price spikes as well as the global economic crisis have given way to more hunger and increased food insecurity. One particular statistic is sobering. The report estimates that there are about one billion people in the world who are undernourished. One billion people. That’s one-sixth of the world’s population.
One billion people for whom the right to food is a cruel joke or a mere mirage. One billion people whose health will continue to flounder because of poor nutrition. That number includes countless adults who will face significant difficulty carrying out their work, or finding work in the first place. And it includes countless children for whom the day’s lessons fade inevitably into the background, while the emptiness that is their hunger gnaws away at their being.
The report points to a number of reasons for increasing prices, from growing demand for bio-fuels created using food crops, to increasing consumption of food from emerging nations which are becoming more prosperous, as well as rising production costs, such as the cost of energy.
And with these increased prices, the burden will be disproportionately borne by the poor, because they spend a far larger share of the family budget on food. It is clear that at the international level, across continents and countries, the right to food will face significant peril over the coming years. Therefore in response, we must redouble our efforts to help protect and fulfill the right to food.
In addition to this threat at the global level, our challenges continue to bedevil the operationalization of the right to food in our own country. Vested interests have worked to stymie genuine comprehensive land reform, through intimidation, the use of legal action, and acts of violence, including murder. And actions arising from economic, political and other interests have deprived vulnerable groups of their access to food, because of water contamination, home demolition, harvest confiscation and worse.
The Philippines continues to be plagued by a host of right to food concerns. And over these many years, and at many critical junctures, one of the primary institutions which has been there and which has continuously stepped up, in order to advocate strenuously, knowledgeably and passionately on behalf of the right to food has been the FoodFirst Information and Action Network or the FIAN.
When interested parties sought to overturn the ban on aerial spraying in Davao City, you were there to provide principled resistance. When farmers in Sariaya, Quezon were being systematically dispossessed of the land, which had been distributed to them under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), you were there to bring these evictions to the attention of the international community. And when intimidation, beatings and murder were brought to bear against a farmers’ organization in Batuan, Masbate, you were there to chronicle the rampant abuse and impunity, as well as issue calls for the government to protect the lives of the farmers.
The FIAN presence in the Philippines is robust. Your reach within the country is long. Your focus is singular. And your advocacy is absolutely indispensable. The right to food in this country would be in worse shape if not for your institution. We, at the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), wish to express our deep respect for the work that you carry out, as well as an abiding appreciation for your efforts.
We now find ourselves at a turning point in the recent history of our nation. The 2010 national elections have ushered in a new administration, and a new set of leaders, one that we hope will pay more than lip service to human rights. We remain cautiously optimistic, and we continue to reiterate that we stand ready to support this new administration, in its efforts to improve the state of human rights in the country. But vigilance remains the order of the day.
Now is the time to redouble our efforts, and make it clear to the incoming set of leaders that human rights, and particularly the right to food, form part of the government’s obligations under international law. It must be reiterated that the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), while espousing the “progressive realization” principle, has imposed the duty to move as expeditiously as possible in order to achieve the full realization of the right to adequate food.
This obligation is three-fold. There is the duty to respect, so that the government must not take any measures which prevent access to adequate food. So for instance, the government must not deny certain communities access to food aid, in order to weaken separatists or insurgents.
There is the duty to protect, which requires the State to ensure that private companies and individuals do not engage in activities which prevent persons from accessing adequate food. So for instance, the government must ensure that the entry of mining companies does not bring about hunger and undernourishment in the communities surrounding their operations.
Finally, there is the duty to fulfill, which has two parts. First, this includes facilitation, so that the government must pro-actively engage in activities aimed at boosting people’s access to food, as well as making that access more stable and more secure. So for instance, a legal framework must be developed which would protect farmers from dispossession, as well as enhance their access to credit, as well as necessary inputs such as fertilizer and seeds.
And second, the duty to fulfill includes direct provision, so that where persons and communities are unable to access food, for reasons beyond their control, the State must step in to provide food directly. This is seen in government responses to natural disasters, such as typhoons, as well as man-made disasters, such as armed conflict.
These duties to respect, protect and fulfill must all be addressed in good faith by the incoming administration. This is of course, a tall order, and no one expects our incoming elected leaders to bring about change overnight. But action must be taken expeditiously, effectively and genuinely. We look to the FIAN to continue to act as a catalyst for improvements over the status quo, as well as a wellspring of expertise and experience, for fellow advocates and other stakeholders.
It was unfortunate that while the previous or exiting administration said many of the right things, its actual activities on the ground left much to be desired. Its rhetoric was not rooted in reality. Too much of what was said remained empty words. One example of this was the failure of the government to ratify the Optional Protocol to the ICESCR.
In 2008, the U.N. General Assembly unanimously adopted this Optional Protocol, which would serve to strengthen the enforcement of the ICESCR, including the right to food. It would give the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights the competence to receive and consider communications, submitted by or on behalf of individuals or groups, who claim that their ESC rights have been breached. The Committee would be able to request the government to take interim measures, to avoid irreparable damage while the communication is considered.
The Committee would also be able to conduct an inquiry into reliable or credible allegations of grave or systematic violations of ESC rights by the government. Such an inquiry could include a visit to the country itself.
The essence of this Optional Protocol is more robust enforcement of ESC rights. For communities whose crops and sources of water are damaged by the large-scale use of pesticides, for farmers who continue to face the hired goons and private militias of landowners, for indigenous peoples who are being forced off their land by multinational extractive industries, the entry into effect of this Optional Protocol in the Philippines would be a significant development.
For ESC rights to mean something, and for the right to life to be more than a mere aspiration or mere pretty words, the government, armed opposition groups and private entities must be held to the norms and obligations contained in the ICESCR. Nothing less than this will do. The rights must be made real on the ground and in the lives of individuals, or else they will be rendered irrelevant and meaningless. Let us therefore continue to push strongly for the ratification of this Optional Protocol, this time by the incoming administration.
The end of the current administration is widely expected to be a major transition in human rights. While executions have invaded the papers yet again with the recent killings of journalists, we do not foresee the covert complicity or outward negligence of public institutions on the scale that we had witnessed at the height of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. We don't expect the dismal climate in human rights punctuated with a seemingly endless rash of crimes of impunity.
While our vigilance over civil and political rights will never cease, the defense of these rights must now move forward to the resolution of unsolved cases from the last nine years. This opens up more resources and man-hours available for the advancement of other rights that must now take center-stage in the next administration.
We predict the assiduous focus on economic, social and cultural rights over the next six years. Attention to ESCR should not fall by the wayside anymore, against a fading backdrop of political killings. The opportunity to advance the right to food and other ESCR is now.
The critical moment comes now at the moment of transition, when policy directions are still at their most malleable, where clamor and lobbying are at their most effective, ears are at their most attentive and minds are at their most susceptible to suggestion.
Thus, the effort required of human rights advocates is heightened now. It runs counter-intuitive to the expectation that rights violations will not be as prevalent this time around. We need to turn a corner in our human rights history, and assert the inseparability, interrelatedness and equal importance of ESCR with CPR.
The CHR Charter, which the last Congress had failed to pass, is expected to come through in the next Congress. Perhaps the most significant proposed modification of the CHR mandate is an expansion that should include ESCR protection. Internally, the CHR has come to realize that the Constitutional mandate from the 1987 Constitution has been stretched too far, and the inclusion of ESCR must be more explicit in order to address current conditions in human rights. We need a mandate that is not framed and thus limited to its reactionary statement to the 20-year dictatorship preceding 1987. It must be crafted now against the new challenges to our freedom, which increasingly includes ESCR.
This is also an opportunity for all human rights advocates who work in ESCR to join us in the looming movement to promote not only the CHR Charter, but all new legislation that strengthens human rights, particularly in the ESCR fields. The last administration had done much in terms of pressing new human rights legislation, and we must give credit where credit is due. But there are many very important bills that never made it into law, or even past the drawing board. And this is the opportunity to make sure everything that strengthens human rights, at every level, in every field of promotion and protection, especially in ESCR.
Signs of the times – these are the things we have to look for. The themes that ring aloud now do not include the banality of national healing. Healing is needed where the winning president-elect needs to mend divisiveness. There is no divisiveness here and now. The mandate to our incoming President is clear, and the sentiment for a definitive change is concretely expressed in the elections. Things must change – and human rights are at the forefront of this clamor.
Potentially, it can become a historical theme by which Filipinos will remember the new administration. It can be the most outstanding feature by which we will remember 2010-2016. Education, health care, the environment, housing and food security can potentially set this administration's human rights agenda apart from all that had come before, if it is done with the specialized focus that it requires now that there is a growing body of academic thought and successful application among advocates from the world over.
The signs of the times requires us to adjust, to correct where we had fallen short on in the past. We have lacked that specialized information and technical knowledge to transform issues such as food security and other ESC rights into concrete programs aided by the CHR. There are stunningly simple questions as to whether the deprivation of ESC rights can be brought to the CHR or to any court for remedy. Where then do we seek relief? With jurisprudence quavering on this issue, not only on the existence of a cause of action, but on practical reliefs, there must be more tests to the courts, more cases filed to assert ESC rights. In many cases, the very people whose ESC rights are violated do not even realize the obligatory character of the State to protect these rights, and this must be reversed.
The right to food, to affordable sustenance has only been framed in the images of long, convoluted lines of people trying to buy NFA rice. What is it, then? People forget that it is more important than just being affordable. It must also be plainly available – as in the case of vitamin-enriched noodles provided to public school students. The right to food is tied to many things, yet at its simplest, it is not just about preventing hunger – it is about fueling people to be industrious, to enjoy their lives and the people around them. When food is scarcely available or affordable, all human activity is stymied.
In the same manner that the Manila Bay Case expresses the growing stability of ESC rights in environmental protection, the right to food must also earn the same recognition. The question really is where do we start? Who is hungry? It is less obvious than we think. It is not as simple as searching for internally displaced persons, refugees of armed conflict or disaster. The hungry are all around us, and they are normal, functioning persons who simply do not have the means to eat more.
In general, ESC rights enforcement faces tough questions on enforceability, on technical expertise and consolidated, validated data. Your CHR is not equipped to formidably deal with ESC rights in general, and the right to food is no exception. Things must change, indeed.
The times require the CHR and all its partners to come together, to re-brand the human rights effort for the next six years. It could be a reinvention that dispels the notion that the CHR and the government acting as human rights advocates are heroes that come too late, as reactive participants in human rights matters.
I look forward to the next few years where our expertise in investigating human rights violations can transition to proactive protection and sustainability of rights mechanisms. I look forward to the opportunity for the CHR to test waters in ESCR where law and jurisprudence have not established clear boundaries on what constitute rights violations and causes of action. I look forward to strong partnerships with FIAN-Philippines and other ESCR organizations in building up the capability of the CHR to retain its role as the premier State agency in complete human rights promotion and protection.
Finally, the signs of the times say that this will be the moment where the true heroes of human rights can exert serious, positive influence on the governmental human rights policy. Civil society had always been what buoys human rights through the peaceful and turbulent years. We've outlasted the last decade of human rights atrocities. And now that we may actually have the conducive environment to push the limits of advocacy, civil society should now take center stage, especially where evolution of rights protection is urgently needed, such as in the right to food and other ESCRs.
The signs merely point, and it is up to us to take the brave steps in the right direction. I look forward to this new and exciting era of human rights collaboration where all our FIAN and all our other partners can walk hand-in-hand to make the signs of the times a manifest reality.
Maraming salamat po.