Giving the Commission on Human Rights a budget of P1,000 for 2018 was “reprehensible and unconscionable.”

That’s the reaction that Agnes Callamard, United Nations special rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, posted on Twitter on Tuesday, shortly after the House of Representatives voted 119-32 in favor of giving the measly amount to the CHR, which has been critical of the Duterte administration’s war on drugs.

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Following is the statement Callamard shared through Facebook:

The Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines is a crucial institution for the Philippines: for human rights protection, the rule of law, accountability. It cannot deliver on its mandate without an appropriate budget, particularly at a time when it is confronted with allegations of massive human rights violations throughout the country, and including, but not only, in the context of the ill-advised, destructive “war on drugs.” The people of the Philippines deserves a strong independent human rights institution able to monitor, investigate, and report on human rights violations, protect victims and their families, and hold the powerful to account for their abuses of international human rights standards. Instead they are getting a “war on drugs” which, by the President’s own account, has failed to curtail addiction rates, while creating a climate of fear and insecurity, feeding impunity, and undermining the constitutional fabrics of the Country. If the Philippines Congress is looking for public money being wasted, damaging and hurting the Philippines society, this is it.

/atm

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