Arroyo sued before UN rights body
over child prisoners’ issue
Posted by: Alecks P. Pabico | December 12, 2005 at 9:22 pm
Filed under: Governance
NOTWITHSTANDING the happy news of the passage on third reading of the Senate version of the juvenile justice bill, children’s rights advocates are not letting Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo get away easily on her apparent inaction on the issue of child offenders languishing in deplorable conditions in Philippine jails.
Last Saturday, on the occasion of International Human Rights Day, the Coalition to Stop Child Detention Through Restorative Justice electronically filed a petition before the Human Rights Committee of the Geneva-based Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, suing the Philippine government for what it claims as the "institutionalized, widespread, and continuing" practice of incarcerating some 20,000 poor children every year under deplorable conditions all over the country.
Assisting five child prisoners in filing the class suit on behalf of children accused of violating the law (CAVL), the coalition has asked the Committee to "break the wall of impunity surrounding the twin evils of police child detention and the lumping together of children with adults in police jails."
The petition was filed pursuant to the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that the Philippines ratified on August 22, 1989. Under the Protocol, individual victims of Covenant violations are allowed to sue before the Committee. A hard copy will be mailed this week to the UN headquarters in Geneva to comply with the requirement for petitions filed online.
The said petition seeks redress of the "widespread, continuing, and institutionalized" violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, particularly the mandatory requirement for the segregation of children and adult prisoners. Also listed are the following violations:
- Children being held under sub-human conditions — subjecting them to torture, cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment [Article 7];
- Children stripped of their dignity and humanity and exposed to greater risks of being sodomized, raped, tortured, tattooed, and subjected to various despicable forms of abuse[Article 10(1)];
- Children denied their right to equal protection of the law as law enforcers refuse them access to psychosocial, health, and legal services [Article 26];
- Children’s right to be informed of their right to remain silent and to have an independent and competent counsel of their own choiceroutinely violated by law enforcers [Custodial Investigation Act (Republic Act 7438), Article 9(1)].
Coalition convenor and lawyer for the child-prisoner petitioners, Perfecto Caparas, said they have exhausted all possible domestic remedies to no avail, including a personal appeal and meeting with Pres. Arroyo to stop the illegal detention of children with adult crime suspects. A petition filed with the Philippine Commission on Human Rights (CHR) resulted in the commission issuing a resolution in December 2003 condemning the Philippine government’s violation of its treaty obligation to segregate children from adult crime suspects. The Philippines ratified the Covenant on October 23, 1986.
In fact, the CHR, as far back as January 1992, had already asked the Office of the President to provide separate facilities for children. Yet the police practice has persisted, Caparas said, due to the "callousness and child-insensitivity of the Office of the President, Secretary of Interior and Local Governments, Secretary of Justice, and Chief of the Philippine National Police."
A similar class suit filed by the coalition before the Ombudsman in December 2003 was dismissed this September. In two separate orders signed by Victor Fernandez, Deputy Ombudsman for Luzon, dated June 21 and September 7, the Ombudsman ruled that the "sub-human conditions" of detained children in cramped police jails did not constitute "undue injury" and was merely "speculative." The Ombudsman also shielded the President and other top government officials from any culpability as they were "far removed" from the violations. Instead, it referred the matter to the Department of Social Welfare and Development and the CHR.
Caparas lamented the Ombudsman’s decision, saying it "further fortified the wall of impunity and gave law enforcers a green light to carry out the practice with impunity."
Read the coalition’s petition before the UN Human Rights Committee here. Confidential information about the child-prisoner petitioners were removed to protect their identities.
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[...] The Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006 was approved yesterday by a bicameral conference committee of the Senate and House of Representatives. The reconciled version is expected to be ratified this afternoon, and then will be sent for signing to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Last December, the Arroyo government, however, was sued before the United Nations Human Rights Committee for “institutionalized, widespread, and continuing” practice of incarcerating some 20,000 poor children every year under deplorable conditions all over the country. [...]