The government has not been able to improve the human rights situation of the country since 2008 when it was last reviewed by the United Nations (UN), Human Rights Watch said, according to a report published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Monday. “The administration of President Benigno Aquino III has failed to take significant measures to prosecute members of the military, police and militias implicated in extrajudicial killings, torture, and enforced disappearances,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement released Monday during a press conference. Human Rights Watch called on the United Nations (UN) to pressure the Philippine government to “ensure accountability for serious human rights abuses,” at the upcoming Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on May 29, 2012. The UPR is a periodic review conducted every four years by the UN Human Rights Council which is composed of UN member countries. The Philippines received 17 recommendations ranging from “improving gender rights to eliminating extrajudicial killings,” the first time it was reviewed in 2008. “The Philippines accepted 11 of these recommendations, including one ‘to completely eliminate torture and extrajudicial killings' and ‘to intensify its efforts to carry out investigations and prosecutions in extrajudicial killings and punish those responsible',” Human Rights Watch said. The government said in a report to the UPR that it has fulfilled its commitment. But Human Rights Watch said that it has failed to “investigate, arrest, and prosecute those responsible for abuses.” One factor that was making it hard for the government to improve on the human rights situation was the country's poor and slow justice system, Jose Manuel Diokno, Chairman of Free-Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), said. He cited two human rights cases that have been languishing in the courts: Aberca versus General Ver that began in 1983 and up to now has not yet been final and the Ortigas Rubout Case which took seven years before the Ombudsman decided to begin preliminary investigations. “I chose these two cases because they signify the situation that our criminal justice system is in, they signify impunity (and) they give a concrete face to that,” Diokno said.
