Human rights record

EDITORIAL

The country’s human rights record is still dismal basing from  the 2014 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, also known as “the Human Rights Report” released June 25 by United States Secretary of State John Kerry.

The Secretary is required each year to provide the United States Congress with “a full and complete report regarding the status of internationally recognized human rights.”  In accordance with this mandate, the Human Rights Report describes the status of internationally recognized individual, civil, political, and worker rights, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in countries around the world.

Kerry’s report said the “Government of the Philippines continued to investigate and prosecute human rights abuses, but concerns about impunity remain.”“The United States government,” it said, “continues to assist the Philippines in addressing a wide range of human rights challenges, most notably through assistance directed toward judicial efficiency and the reduction of case backlogs, the inclusion of women in the peace process, protecting vulnerable populations in disaster-affected areas, law enforcement and prosecutorial capacity-building, and promoting sexual orientation and gender identity awareness.”

Underscoring the findings in the report, Ambassador Goldberg noted that “Extrajudicial killings remain foremost among the human rights challenges in the Philippines.” But he said he was“encouraged by interagency cooperation within the Philippine government to address impunity, but more remains to be done.”

In Northern Luzon, notably Cordillera, a lot of human rights abuses allegedly committed by the military and police have remained unsolved like the case of James Balao who was abducted in  La Trinidad, Benguet some years ago. Other cases could be downloaded through the internet like the entire 2014 Philippines Human Rights Report through Internet URL http://www.humanrights.gov.  Additional information is available on the U.S. Embassy’s web site at http://philippines.usembassy.gov.

Indeed, more effort is needed on the part of concerned government officials to solve these cases or abate the problem