Research group IBON, a member of the multisectoral network\nAidWatch, said that the Duterte administration is stopping talks on new\nofficial development assistance (ODA) from 18 countries as part of its efforts\nto hide the worsening domestic human rights situation. This includes Spain\nwhich is supporting the Commission on Human Rights (CHR). The group said that the\nshow of standing up against foreign intervention in the country is hollow because\nthe administration continues to receive much more \u2018aid\u2019 from China and the\nUnited States (US) despite their much larger and more damaging intervention in\nthe Philippines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The administration issued a memorandum on August 27, 2019\ndirecting the suspension of all negotiations and signing of loan and grant\nagreements with the 18 countries of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights\nCouncil that recently supported a resolution to investigate human rights violations\nin the country. These include: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahamas,\nBulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Fiji, Iceland, Italy, Mexico, Peru,\nSlovakia, Spain, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and Uruguay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
AidWatch, a network actively working with different\ngovernment agencies and stakeholders on ODA issues, noted that as of the first\nquarter of 2019, the 18 countries combined account for only US$525 million or\nless than 3% of the Philippines’ active loans and grants. This is because only\nthree of the 18 countries have active ODA here — Australia (US$476 million),\nItaly (US$41 million) and Spain (US$8.1 million). There is also just an\nadditional US$414 million in the pipeline from Australia (US$82 million),\nAustria (US$177 million), and the UK (US$155 million). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Active grants and loans mostly go to education, disaster\nmanagement, agrarian reform and peace-building projects. Spain however also\nprovides almost US$6 million in grants as institutional support for the CHR\nunder the Project Go-Just Human Rights-CHR project. This started in February\n2016 and is due to end in December 2019. Aid in the pipeline is meanwhile overwhelmingly\nfor transport infrastructure especially bridges, the group noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The president\u2019s memo says that the government is in the\nprocess of \u2018assessing\u2019 relations with these countries. AidWatch said that this\nis clearly a signal not just to the 18 countries but to the international community\nthat it will not take any criticism about its human rights record and indeed\nthat the only narrative about the human rights situation it allows will be its\nown sanitized version. The administration has already said that it will not\ncooperate with the UN on any such investigation and that it will block the\nentry of any UN special rapporteurs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The group said that this is however clearly not a principled stand against foreign intervention but a self-serving stand to cover up massive and rising human rights violations stemming from its violent \u2018war on drugs\u2019 and repression of activists and political opposition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Duterte administration continues to accept US$365\nmillion in active ODA from China and looking to as much as US$10.6 billion more\ndespite its gross intrusiveness in the West Philippine Sea, said the group. It\nis also accepting US$887 million in active ODA and US$276 million in military\naid over 2016-2020 from the US despite Philippine territory being used as a US\nmilitary outpost hosting troops, warplanes, war materiel, equipment and bases. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
IBON said that notwithstanding the president\u2019s swagger and\nrhetoric, the country is clearly still under the thrall of big foreign powers\nand still wanting genuinely independent foreign policy. ###<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Photo credit: Ludovic Court\u00e8s<\/em> | Wikimedia Commons <\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Research group IBON, a member of the multisectoral network AidWatch, said that the Duterte administration is stopping talks on new official development assistance (ODA) from 18 countries as part of its efforts to hide the worsening domestic human rights situation. This includes Spain which is supporting the Commission on Human Rights (CHR). The group said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_expiration-date-status":"saved","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[2048,14],"tags":[1834,1902,347,2074,572,650,96,735,1043,1463,1972,2047,2075],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8587"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8590,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8587\/revisions\/8590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}