Gabriela urges UN envoy to probe state-backed violence vs women

House Assistant Minority Leader and Gabriela lawmaker Arlene Brosas urged United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur Irene Khan to probe the rising cases of alleged state-perpetrated violence against women in the Philippines.

Brosas issued the call after the meeting she and other Makabayan coalition members had with Khan. The solon said Thursday that government has targeted women human rights defenders in the country through intimidation, surveillance, harassment, red-tagging, abduction and killings, affecting their vital work in the fight for human rights and social justice.

"Through the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC)  and under Anti-Terrorism Law, a lot of women are experiencing violence and trumped up charges. 159 out of 795 political prisoners are women, and this number is increasing," she said.

"It is alarming how the government has been wielding its power to silence women who are fighting for the rights of the people amid the lack of decent jobs, meager wages, lack of genuine land reform, and deteriorating human rights situation in the country," Brosas added.

During the same meeting, Gabriela submitted to Khan  its January 2024 report, “Shrinking Space for Women Political Participation and Expression”.

“The space for political participation and expression has also substantially shrunk under the Duterte administration owing to unbridled State-backed harassment, intimidation, lawfare and vilification operations against female officials and their supporters<” the report read.

The same report states that “High-ranking public officials have leveraged misogynistic threats against female parliamentarians with the goal of silencing women’s voices and limiting women’s political participation.”

According to its report, Gabriela, “the sole women’s party-list in Congress is facing a petition to cancel its registration. This petition was filed by the executive branch - threatening to pluck out marginalized women’s active political participation from policymaking and governance,” referring to the disqualification case filed against Gabriela party-list by linking the group to communist rebels.

In addition, Gabriela also urged the international community to support the Filipinos’ call for justice and democracy amid the Marcos, Jr.’s administration’s push for Charter Change.

In November 2023, UN Special Rapporteur Ian Fry said the administration should disband the NTF-ELCAC and develop another approach to countering the country’s insurgency issues.

“The NTF-ELCAC, I just get a sense it has moved beyond its mandates and usefulness and needs to be disbanded outright and the government needs to develop another approach to deal with the terrorism issues,” Fry said in a media briefing. 

The NTF-ELCAC took exception to Fry's assessment and report which the agency claimed was “deemed incomplete.”

Reached for comment, NTF-ELCAC told GMA News Online that, "Ms.Khan made it unequivocally clear to the NTF-ELCAC during a recent meeting that her mandate is only about freedom of opinion and expression. We are bound to respect her position so that we opt not to comment on matters beyond her boundaries."—RF, GMA Integrated News