CEDAW to look at Manila women’s violations

I write this during breaks in the sessions of the 5th Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights in Beijing. The conference draws together respected experts and advocates and some 1,000 participants as they discuss and listen to views on issues that are too important to relegate to the back burner. These issues are interlinked — high population growths and how they affect the environment, climate change and natural resources; how they contribute to poverty; HIV/AIDS, migration, among others. They are being discussed in a tone of things better be done now, before the world comes to an end.

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But before writing about what happens in this conference, let me go back to what was happening in Manila a day before I left, when discussion was on reproductive and health rights and how these are being violated by Philippine government officials.

The meeting, held in a restaurant in Quezon City, brought up the cases of two women in Manila whose rights were violated because they were refused family planning services. Sylvia Pabustan was told at a Manila City health clinic that she could not be given family planning supplies because “if someone from Manila City Hall found out, the clinic would be reprimanded.” When Sylvia went to a private clinic, she was told the same thing.

The other woman, Alia Banyana, whose real name, like Sylvia, has been changed for security purposes, was also told at the Ospital ng Maynila that she could not have a tubal ligation at the facility on the ground that it was “Pro-Life.”

These stories are two cases collected by EnGenderRights, WomenLEAD, KAKAMMPI and SAMAKANA-Gabriela during visits in Manila in 2008 and 2009.

EnGendeRights executive director Atty. Clarita Padilla blames former Manila Mayor Lito Atienza’s EO 003 Series of 2000, which promotes the use of natural family planning (NFP) and “discourages the use of artificial methods of contraception, like condoms, pills, intrauterine devices, and surgical fertilization.” The EO has resulted in a ban on modern contraceptives from all the Manila-run public health facilities and a denial of information or referral on the full range of contraceptive methods, said Padilla.

In her statement read before the media, Padilla said the policy of promoting NFP alone “has cost many poor women in Manila significantly. As a consequence, some of them ended up having as many as eight more children than they actually desired. While the national average would only show that women usually have one child more than they desired, the disparity between desired and actual number of children is greater for poor women. Poor women are further impacted by EO 003 because they do not have the money for their own contraceptive supplies and counseling from private doctors, unlike wealthier women in Manila.”

At the meeting were three active advocates of reproductive health rights: Dr. Mary Hollnsteiner, professor at Ateneo de Manila University; Ben de Leon, president of The Forum for Family Planning & Development, and Atty. Claire AP Luczon, executive director of WomenLEAD and also a co-convenor of the Task Force CEDAW Inquiry.

According to Attorney Luczon, the practice of denying women access to modern family planning in Manila is against international law and the Philippines’ international treaty obligations, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) which was ratified by the Philippines in 1981.

Consequently, 20 members from various civil society organizations have submitted official requests for inquiry for consideration of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Commitee) to investigate discrimination and other treaty violations resulting from the EO. They make up the Philippine-based Task Force CEDAW Inquiry, made up of EnGenderRights, WomenLEAD, the Center for Reproductive Rights and International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia-Pacific (IWRAW-AP). Their first request was not answered, nor were their two follow-up requests.

Attorney Padilla said that the Task Force CEDAW Inquiry’s goal is “to draw attention to the grave and systematic violations of reproductive health rights of Manila residents. The inquiry is a very important procedure that allows the CEDAW experts the opportunity to visit the Philippines to investigate violations committed against women’s reproductive rights. The request for inquiry is only the second that has been submitted to the CEDAW community. This is historical. The impact of such a visit will not only be in the Philippines but in other countries as well where there are similar violations of women’s rights.”

Over a year has passed since the request for inquiry was submitted to the CEDAW Committee, and the EO has not been overturned. The committee had asked the Philippine government to submit a response to the CEDAW Committee before the end of February 2009, but the government, through the Department of Foreign Affairs, still has not issued its official response, according to Clara Rita A. Padilla, JD, Engender Rights, Inc. executive director. “The request of the CEDAW Committee to the government already means that they considered the information submitted to them as reliable and indicative of grave and/or systematic violations as provided under Rule 823 of the CEDAW Committee Rules. The government also has not expressed its consent to the visit of the CEDAW Committee.”

Luczon said that the Philippine government “has committed to respect, protect and promote the human rights of women to reproductive health, including their human right to family planning information and services. Through the inquiry procedure, our government will be called to account for the violations of the commitments it has made under CEDAW and other international human rights instruments. Hopefully, this international pressure will put a stop to the ongoing violations of women’s reproductive rights all over the country.”

Since the EO has been prevailing for almost a decade now and it has not been overturned by the mayor of Manila (now Alfredo Lim), the President, Congress and the judiciary, Padilla said, “we decided to go to the United Nations CEDAW Committee as a last resort. We simply cannot let the women suffer violations.” –Domini M. Torrevillas (The Philippine Star)