Human Rights Violations: Focusing on Matters

By Atty. Algamar A. Latiph

Peace is an essential pre-condition for the realization of human rights and

fundamental freedoms. When ever peaceful relations between human beings, groups
of persons, peoples and nations are threatened, human rights tend to be jeopardized.
Wars and armed conflicts cause per se flagrant and passive violations of human
rights…[1] Many liberation struggles are human rights struggles and by implication
this notion is well reflected in the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights:[2]

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last

resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be
protected by the rule of law.

Therefore, no peace can be sustained with out justice and with out respect for
human rights.[3]

Given this premise, we highlight the importance of peace that lays down a
condition where human rights can be fulfilled, promoted, and protected. The
prevailing conflict aggravated human rights situations and in fact it has become the
main source of human rights violations. While it is claimed that the root cause of the
conflict is premised on historical legal rights of the Moro, the underlying cause that
made the Moro armed and organized themselves as a liberation group such as the
MNLF and MILF to name a few is the human rights violations sourced from
deprivation of political rights, personal security rights, and basic human needs. It is
then ironical that while the conflict underlying cause is to address and probably
eliminate human rights violations the very same conflict worsen human rights
violations adding up to the existing human rights violations.

There has been peace agreement in the past but there seems to be no peace at
hand. The conflict claimed thousands of lives, properties and billions of public fund
and yet the military solution has yet to attain peace.

Since Pres. Joseph Estrada came to power and declared all-out-war policy, the
Philippines produced 2 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), mostly Moro, in
the war-torn Mindanao.

Now we have 700,000 IDPs and this figure is increasing by the day. The IDP
exists along the illegal detentions, arrests and searches in relation to the conflict
which strike at the very core of liberty as well as extra-judicial killings and forced
disappearance. These human rights violations relates to the conflict and have to be
distinguished to illegal arrests and searches in mostly urbanized cities.

The Internally Displace Person

The absence of a legal framework for addressing their needs, and the lack of
coherent institutional arrangements to bring aid and protection to them.[4] While
IDPs can be protected by the international legal framework emanating from
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and International Humanitarian Law these
international instruments they are merely in general application. Obviously, if these
international normative framework are observed in the conflict we do not have these
700,000 IDPs. In short, these international instrument find no relevancy with the
IDPs.[1]

Many regimes blatantly deny protection and assistance to IDPs as a form of

leverage to manipulate political actors and outside humanitarian agencies.[5]
Worldwide in year 2000 there were 25 million persons which have been displaced
within their own country by armed conflict, internal strife and communal tensions,
circumstances which are commonly characterized by serious violations of human
rights. Displacement, by its very nature, generally exposes its victims to still further
violations of human rights. Uprooted from their homes and property, separated from
their community and often even family support networks, and cut off from their
resource base, displaced persons frequently become even more vulnerable upon
flight.[6]

A consensus is gradually emerging about a state’s responsibilities and

accountabilities to both domestic and international constituencies.[7] Despite of this,
the Philippines which produced two million IDPs had not been meted with any
international sanction neither shaming by international non-government organization.
This shows impunity in the intrusion by state in this aspect of human rights
violations.

It was said in one research that the decision to become an IDP has two stages and
contends that the decision hinges on one’s expectations of (a) victimization and (b)
socio-politico-economic opportunities. The first stage is the decision whether to
abandon one’s home and is a function of expectations of victimization. The second
stage is the decision where to relocate and is a function of both expectations of
victimization and opportunities in the different locations.[8]
Information as a Tool

Reading literature on the subject I conclude that that information not legal
framework effectively address human rights violations. And this cannot be done by
isolation but rather collective efforts, networking and collaboration among the
stakeholders as well as non-government organizations. The example of this is the
extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances which tremendously decreased due to
civil society organizations went in the open utilizing all medium of communication.
This had put in motion the creation of Melo Commission; Special Repporttuer
Philippe Alston was appointed by the Council on Human Rights.

Compared with EJK, the Moro human rights is so evident. The creation of 2
million IDPs since 2000 and the existing 700,000 IDPs has not been given that kind
of attention both by charter-based body such as the UN CHR or a truth commission
or a remedial recourse from the Supreme Court like the Writ of Amparo and Writ of
Habeas Data. Just this month, media were barred to enter Datu Piang to report IDPs’
situation for security issue.

The Cotabato Forum

I amplify my presentation in Cotabato Forum, I would suggest the following s

priorities in the field of human rights:

1. Consultation and Participation of Stakeholders

2. Monitoring and Reporting
3. Documentation and Data Gathering
4. Capacity-building and Networking
5. Publication

Consultation and Participation of Stakeholders

The stakeholders, the HRV victims, play a vital role in the decision-making when
we talk of their interest. They must be a part of consultation and participation in
embodying the measures for their protection and redress of their grievances because
they are the ones which rights were violated. From them, we could adduced the
relevant intervention needed because they were the ones who personally knows the
rights violated and the needs and assertions they seek to pursue.
Monitoring and Reporting

Constant monitoring and reporting could be a preventive measure in protecting

human rights violation. If the agents of the state and non-state actor in the conflict is
constantly monitored and reported their may be reduction on the casualties of war.

Documentation and Data Gathering

Expanding monitoring capacity observing and reporting on the immediate impact

of war on populations and individuals require a range of skills grounded in core
methods of epidemiology, demography, statistics, legal analysis, and public health
assessment.[9] Media broadcasts of a war can be followed or ignored; it is harder to
dismiss reports from human rights activists that detail statistical findings on deaths,
injuries, rapes, mutilations, forced marches, and psychological distress.[10]

Capacity-building and Networking

The health and human rights capacity for measurement and specification of detail,
when applied to communities affected by war, has often helped to galvanize
international concern about the human toll in suffering.

Publication

There must be a strategic effort to project these human rights violations to all
concerned institutions the CSO, communities, treaty-based bodies, charter-based
bodies, international NGOs, governments, international aid institution. We must
utilize all forms and pillars of communications.

Policy Recommendations

The role of health and human rights professionals in this mix is to provide early,
consistent, and accurate information and analysis about the human costs of violence,
hostilities, and wars. The methods are disciplined but the presentation can be tautly
passionate, so that people hearing the testimony of committed health professionals
can apprehend the suffering that is being reported and be moved, emotionally as well
as cognitively, to press their governments to intervene diplomatically, economically,
and, if necessary, militarily.[11]

So far there has been Moro human rights group that address human rights
violations committed against Moro such as the Bangsamoro Lawyers’ Network and
the Muslim Legal Assistant Foundation. But they have this inherent limitation in
advocating human rights.

But there was no prioritization on what specific human right violations that should
be considered. The 700,000 IDPs cannot be denied of its far-reaching important in
making it as the number one priority.

With the number of human violations, there has to be a prioritization and

categorization of the concerns that must be addressed. Second, we must also consider
the attainability and sustainability of the objectives given the human resources and
capacity involved. Third, time-framed must be set out at the outset.

Finally, we may have our own perspective of seeing things but the victims of the
human rights have different way of seeing things. We are accountable to them since
they are the ends and subject of whatever policy that we are formulating, it would be
a human rights violation should we denied them of participation. We cannot assume
to know what redress they seek to address.

[1] _________________, The Manual of Human Rights Reporting, Under Six Major International Human Rights Instruments prepared by Office of
the High Commissioner of Human (Geneva, 1997)

[2] Id.

[3] Id.

[4] Cohen, R., Developing an International System for Internally Displaced Persons, International Studies Perspectives (2006) 7, 87–101.

[5] Weiss, T., Whither International Efforts for Internally Displaced Persons?, Journal of Peace Research 1999; 36; 363.

[6] Id. at note 5.

[7] Id.

[8] (Moore, W., Refugee or Internally Displaced Person? To Where Should One Flee?, Comparative Political Studies Volume 39 Number 5, June
2006 599-622)

[9] Leaning, J., Human Rights and Conflict, Health and Human Rights, Vol. 6, No. 2, Violence, Health, and Human Rights, 2003, pp. 150-160.

[10] Id..

[11] Id.