INTRODUCTION

It is a known fact that Philippines is a democratic country, people can be

as free as they want so long as their exercise of freedom is within the bounds of
the law. Here, your basic human rights are respected and protected. Sounds
enticing right? But don’t fall in love with this idea right away. The surface may
be pleasing to the eyes but once you dig deeper, surely you’ll discover the
ugliness it tries to conceive from us. It would not take you that long to turn
your nose away from the stink this government hides.
According to an online article by Human Rights Watch, human rights
violations in the country have declined under the Aquino administration. In all
fairness to the presidency of His Excellency, extra judicial killings, enforced
disappearances and torture are comparatively lower than the previous
administration. But still, they continue to exist. The Aquino administration has
failed to keep its promise of a more concrete action plan against human rights
violations in the country. Committees have been formed before, just like the
Special Task Force against Extra Judicial Killings and Enforced
Disappearances but according to the same article it has failed to deliver
results. This move was more of a PR strategy from the government. Sounded
like it was just ornamental, but not functional. But one has to look beyond
these human rights issues, because there are more to these, not just the
killings and the disappearances.

DISCUSSION

The title of the speech of Former Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno suggests
a strong support or emphasis on the protection of Human Rights not only in
the country but also in the international scope. His speech talk about the
advancement of human rights in the world and in the Philippines. The words
spoken by the former Chief Justice reminded and to some informed us of the
importance of Human Rights and how it came to be a very important issue
which should not be neglected.
The speech of the Justice Reynato S. Puno was divided in five subtopics, which
is very educational and easily understood if heard by an attentive listener. I
was not able to listen with his speech personally but as I read it, it gave me an
impression that indeed the former Chief Justice is a good teacher because of
his way of presenting his thoughts and ideas which is very informative and
easily understood by any readers or listener. To give my comments about his
speech, I would like to follow his outline to express how I understood it and to
highlight specifically the important points that I’ve encountered in it.

I. Evolution of Generations of Human Rights

In this part he mentioned about the four generations of evolution of
Human Rights. The first generation is in the form of individual and civil rights
and as what he said “These are rights essential to human nature or that inhere
in all human being as humans.”, which I certainly agree as these are the rights
limited to personal liberty, equality before the law, and the protection of
property and with the declaration of the “American Bill of Rights” added in it
the freedom of religion, freedom of speech and of the press, right to peaceably
assemble, process and the expansion of one’s political rights which is the right to
vote.
 The second generation refers to social, economic and cultural rights
which include the right to education, the right to health care, the right to
strike, the right to bargain collectively, the right to work, and the right to
cultural heritage.
The third generation of human rights partake of the nature of collective
rights, like the right to have a healty environment, the right to development,
and the rights of indigenous communities.
The fourth generation of human rights is still in the process of developing
which according to the Chief Justice includes the protection of the human
genome and of genetic identity, as well as the rights that flow from information
technology.

II. The Internalization of Human Rights

In his speech he emphasized the transformation of Human Rights issues
from national to international. This Internalization started in 1948 with the
United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the past, human
rights were protected only from violations by the state but today it includes
those responsible for their violation as what the Justice said “...the irreversible
trend now is to hold both the State and individuals accountable for violation of
international human rights.”

III. The Constitutionalization of International Human Rights

This part of his speech compared how countries treat international
treaties on human rights. The Philippines as what he said was giving a rank
on international treatise at par with the laws of Congress or the Parliament.

IV. Judicial protection of Human Rights

In this part of his speech, he mentioned the two systems on how human
rights are protected by courts all over the world. The first follows the Anglo-
American model where constitutional rights are protected by a resort to
ordinary or extraordinary remedies provided by law or equity. The second
system followed in Latin American countries where aside from the usual
judicial remedies to protect constitutional rights there are three specific writs
designed for the purpose: 1) writ of habeas corpus, 2)writ of amparo, and 3)writ
of habeas data.

V. The Philippine Situation

In this part of his speech emerged his being a real Filipino, recognizing
the glorious history of our forefathers protecting human rights in our
motherland as best exemplified by Rizal, Mabini, Del Pilar and other national
heroes who established first democracy in Asia. Here he recognize the
brilliance of the framers of the 1987 Constitution who framed it in a way to
protect the citizens from the havoc that could be delivered by Human Rights
violators.

CONCLUSION
 Throughout this article I have outlined a series of challenges and
rebuttals to the concept of an instrumental account of democracy as a human
right. Though assumptions were made to further my argument, such as the
grounding of human rights in a moralist account of essential legal equality
among humans, I feel that this was a reasonable assumption to make in order
to keep in good faith with the popular understanding of human rights. By
limiting the problem areas of a universal moral approach by emphasizing
deliberation and social discourse around values of equality, the question of the
extent to which states that have unequal political representation and
participation should be tolerated was able to be answered. Essentially, I was
able to set a minimum limit on democratic representation based on the data
collected from studies that analyzed the effects that democratic representation
has on meeting other human rights.
So even if there is an illiberal society, much like Rawls’ example of
Kazanistan, as long as they have a basis for fairly equal representation and
political participation, they can be accepted (Cohen 2005, p. 246). In doing so, I
was able to satisfy the conditions that provided the greatest barriers to the
instrumental argument of democracy as a human right: the need for moral
urgency, and the lack of cultural resonance. Therefore, even though the
argument for universal democracy is sometimes taken for granted, and other
times rejected outright as a Western fantasy, I believe that I have presented a
comprehensive philosophically and politically justified argument for proving
that democracy is in fact a human right.