IP rights activist is ILO awardee

HAPPY WEEKEND
By Gina Dizon

One among 11 awardees of the International Labor Organization (ILO)sponsored ‘Pagkilala sa mga natatanging kuwentong katutubo’ conducted with Probe Media Foundation and Philippine Press Institute, journalist Arthur ‘Art ‘Allad-iw received the international award December 12, 2011 at Makati City in the presence of ILO representatives and media practitioners.

The ILO award recognizes Art’s story, ‘Anti dam activist gets Laureate award’ printed online in www. nordis.net. The story tells about Bontoc woman leader Mother Petra Macliing awarded the Laureate Prize for Rural women for the year 2009 by the Women’s World Summit Foundation , a Geneva based humanitarian, non-government and non- profit organization. Mother Petra is one among staunch community leaders of Bontoc and Kalinga who successfully opposed the infamous Chico Dam Development Project in the 1970s; and also one among some 200 men and women of Bontoc who drove away Benguet Mining Corporation prospectors out of her hometown in Mainit, Bontoc in the 1970s. For a related story about Mother Petra Macli-ing, you may refer this article, ‘Bontoc woman leader enjoins youth to be social activists’, printed in this same issue of the paper.

Journalist, human rights activist, and also an instructor, Art teaches at the Arts and Sciences Department of Baguio-based Easter College Inc while doubling as staff writer, editor and editorial consultant of Northern Dispatch, a Baguio based regional paper.

Art writes stories to www.bulatlat.com, a Filipino online magazine; a contributor of ipsnews.net, an international wire, and also writes for reporting.net, a Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project.

Art also served as Vice-chairman of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP)
Baguio-Benguet Chapter, a post he held since 2007.

A supportive and protective father to two daughters-Can-aw and Dumay-, and a loving husband to wife Carol, Art goes beyond family life and embraced collective life among indigenous peoples in his own hometown in Sagada to the wider IP collective in the Cordillera region, in the country and international sphere as well.

Art traces his roots from Sagada Mountain Province. He finished Roxas Elementary School at Baguio City in 1978 and graduated secondary education at Saint Mary’s School in Sagada.

His walking on crutches due to the spinal injury he incurred in 1984 did not stop him from studying and finished Bachelor of Arts in Communication at Baguio Colleges Foundation (BCF) now University of the Cordilleras (UC) on to Bachelor of Laws and graduated at BCF in 1999.

Art’s story comes with a living history of IP rights and human rights work as a student leader and a community leader as well.

A staunch indigenous people’s rights activist, Art worked with the Legal and Paralegal Desk Coordinator of DINTEG while he was studying Law at BCF.

In the pursuit for IP rights, he worked with the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) and also served as CPA Deputy Secretary General from 1992 to 1995.

His leadership in local and national solidarities on human rights and IP rights led him to be the Maritime Asia Convenor of the International Alliance of Indigenous Peoples of the Tropical Forest, an alliance of indigenous organizations worldwide from 1999 to 2000.

He joined international conferences as an IP delegate including the United Nations sponsored
First World Indigenous Youth Conference in Quebec City in Canada; and UNITAR (United Nations Institute on Training and Research) Asia-Pacific Regional Training to Enhance the Conflict Prevention and Peace Building Capacity of Indigenous Peoples’ Representatives in Chiang Mai, Thailand; among other international gatherings