uphold, assert and defend all human rights for all!
uphold, assert and defend all human rights for all!
Geneva 15 – 16 October 2012. The United Nations Human Rights Committee concluded the examination of the fourth periodic report of the Philippines on the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). This review took place on 15 and 16 October 2012 in Geneva and was attended by a dozen Civil Society Organisations (CSO) from the Philippines that submitted several reports.
The Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates salutes with joy and gratitude the members, staff and Board of Trustees of the Medical Action Group as it conducts its 20th General Assembly and celebrates its 30th Anniversary. PAHRA heartily congratulates each and everyone who contributed, great and small, for developing and carrying through what MAG is up to this Anniversary.
Our human right to the freedom of information
has not yet been made justiciable,
already a law is readied to curtail
our human right to the freedom of expression.
Republic Act No. 10175 –
AN ACT DEFINING CYBERCRIME, PROVIDING FOR THE PREVENTION, INVESTIGATION, SUPPRESSION AND THE IMPOSITION OF PENALTIES THEREFOR AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES –
was drafted, discussed, signed into law with all the good intentions to decisively stop the “perpetuation of licentiousness” ( Petition for Certioriari by members of the Ateneo Human Rights Center or AHRC Petition) and other harmful acts perpetrated within the cyber communities and affecting as well millions of Filipino users of the internet. R.A. No. 10175 was to take into effect last October 3, 2012.
21st Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council
Item 10: Technical Assistance and Capacity Building - General Debate
Thank you, Madam President. FORUM-ASIA makes this statement in association with the Solidarity for Asian People’s Advocacy Task Force on ASEAN and Human Rights (SAPA-TFAHR), and we call on this Council to pay due attention to and provide comprehensive advisory services for the development of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD) which must uphold universal human rights norms and standards. We also urge the ASEAN Foreign Ministers, who are to meet tomorrow on 27 September in New York, to critically revisit the current draft AHRD, ensure that it includes the full spectrum of human rights, and adopt a clause that explicitly precludes any interpretation of the AHRD as impairing the UDHR and the core human rights treaties to which ASEAN member States are party.[1]
Madam President, we express our concern at the significant flaws in the draft AHRD version of 23 June 2012.[2] Firstly, article 7 attempts to bring back the discourse of “Asian Values” by stipulating that “the realization of human rights must be considered in the regional and national context”. This runs contrary to the spirit of the 1993 VDPA which stated that “it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
