The Ateneo Human Rights Center (AHRC) is a university-based institution engaged in the promotion of human rights in the Philippines. With its vision to have a just and humane society and the mission to respect, protect, and promote human rights most especially in the Philippines, the AHRC works to achieve its objectives through engagement with communities and partner organizations.
The Center’s establishment of legal assistance hubs in cooperation with the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) brings together legal aid providers to develop a more responsive justice system through pilot referral, free virtual legal assistance, and support services to victims of human rights violations and their families in different regions and provinces, particularly NCR, Caraga, Region III, and Region X.
Ensuring these initiatives are easily available and accessible to all is especially important at a time where there are an increasing number of extra-judicial killings (EJKs), torture, unlawful arrests, and other grave human rights violations perpetrated by the government.
From the project’s duration of July 2019 to June 2020, various activities were implemented, such as:
Focus Group Discussions (FGD) with legal aid service providers, which discussed the existing referral mechanism and the current efforts of their organization in providing legal assistance to victims of human rights violations;
Learning sessions in referral mechanism in providing legal assistance to victims of human rights violations, which were discussions on forming a strategic approach for referring cases which require legal assistance;
Provision of legal support and services, which include a case conference with a CHR lawyer and investigator, OPLAN PAGHILOM, a healing intervention program for the homeless and victims of human rights violations, and lastly, the establishment of a COVID-19 legal assistance hub response into an accessible online platform.
Despite the project’s limited time and mobility for the project’s implementation, it resulted in a fruitful collaboration between the CHR and its legal aid partners. It was also able to successfully come up with a feasible sustainability plan, which outlined the importance of an online platform for the quick referral of cases, a constant and transparent dialogue between the CHR and its legal aid partners, and a formalized collaboration in writing for future partnerships, among other things.
See here for an unabridged version of the project’s report.