Rights groups slam govt, now over food issue

from the Inquirer

By Beverly T. Natividad

MANILA, Philippines -- From decrying extrajudicial killings, human rights advocates are now hitting the government for its failure to provide adequate food to Filipinos, a human right, which they said, is also guaranteed by international law.

The human rights groups Amnesty International (AI) and the Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA) have expressed alarm over the soaring prices of food and the government’s inability to cushion the blow for poor Filipinos.

In a press briefing on Saturday, AI’s local executive director Aurora Parong said that the government had the “obligation to create conditions in order that food is available in adequate supply and that people can buy food.”

She said that amid a looming food crisis, the government has failed to adopt policies that ensure sustainable food production, as well as jobs and decent wages that will enable ordinary Filipinos to buy food.

“The right to food is one of the rights provided in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Philippines has obligations to fulfill the right to food,” said Parong.

She said it was the government’s responsibility to create conditions that guarantee adequate of supply of food.

Parong said that while the government recently reported to the United Nations in Geneva that it had “made respectable gains in providing better standards of life in larger freedoms of its people in terms of human development and the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals,” a good number of Filipinos were still living below the poverty line and below the food threshold.

Citing 2006 data from the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), she said that 14.6 percent or 12 million Filipinos still live below the food threshold, while some 28 million of the population live in poverty.