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MARCH 22, 2016
Letter to the 2016 Presidential Candidates
Questionnaire on Human Rights in the Philippines
Dear Presidential Candidate,
Human Rights Watch is an international nongovernmental organization that monitors and advocates for human rights in more than 90 countries. Human Rights Watch has been reporting on the human rights situation in the Philippines since the 1980s.
Human Rights Watch is distributing the questionnaire below to all presidential candidates for the May 9, 2016 election. The objective of this questionnaire is to obtain each candidate’s views on the Philippines’s most important human rights challenges and ideas on how to address them. The questionnaire consists of 10 questions.
Human Rights Watch will publish the responses to this questionnaire to provide Filipino voters with the views of each candidate on human rights issues of key national concern.
We would be grateful if you could respond to this questionnaire in as much detail as possible. The deadline for submitting responses for publication is April 15, 2016.
Thank you very much for your participation.
Best regards,
Brad Adams
Director
Asia Division
Human Rights Watch
Questionnaire on Human Rights in the Philippines
What are the most important areas of progress in human rights in the Philippines in the past decade?
What are the biggest human rights challenges facing the country?
How should the government deal with the problem of impunity, by which members of the security forces implicated in serious abuses go unpunished?
What actions should be taken to protect the rights of indigenous peoples, the so-called Lumads around the country, particularly in Mindanao?
What is your view of the Reproductive Health Law? The recent decision of Congress to delete specific budgetary allocations for the delivery of family-planning services to poor families has prevented the law from being implemented.
How do you think the government should deal with killings of journalists, many of them in apparent retaliation for reporting on corruption and poor governance?
How will you address the summary killings by so-called death squads, some having links to local authorities, in urban centers across the Philippines?
Years after the passage in 2009 of the anti-torture law, not one perpetrator of torture has been convicted even as reports of torture by state security forces continue to surface. What actions should be taken to ensure that this law is enforced?
How will you address the plight of tens of thousands of Filipinos who remain displaced as a result of armed conflict between government and rebel forces, specifically in Zamboanga City and the provinces of Maguindanao, Davao del Norte, and Surigao del Sur?
What steps should the government take to address the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Philippines, which some experts say is the worst in the region, if not the world?
Region / Country
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