Helpless

A basic weakness of the implementing mechanisms of almost all international

conventions on human rights, humanitarian law, women, children, tortures,
extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances is that the role of the
international bodies which are supposed to implement them is limited to pure
inquiry and reporting.

They are helpless in the face of the chronic indifference and inaction of the guilty
state actors.

In grave and urgent cases, though, the UN Security Council may intervene, using
UN-accredited military forces formed for such special situations as provided by the
UN Charter.

But such instances of UN interventions seem to be rare, e.g. Rwanda,

Bosnia/Kosovo, Cambodia -- and only if the US and the European Union push them,
which is usually too late and too little.

In most cases, the insidious daily human rights abuses all over the world escape the
eyes and ears of the UN Security Council or are better left forgotten by the five
permanent members of the UN Security Council if and when so dictated by the
imperatives of their national interests.

In many instances even the well-publicized resolutions and sanctions imposed by

the UN Security Council are left unheeded by the recalcitrant state actors, as in the
cases of Israel, Palestine, North Korea, Iran, and Sudan.

In the case of the very poor state of human rights in the Philippines under the 8-
year old de facto military regime of the illegitimate Philippine President Gloria
Arroyo, a number of damaging reports have been globally circulated by independent
human rights reporters assigned by the concerned UN bodies.

Their reports on the Philippine human rights situations have died in the archives of
the Office of the President of the Philippines -- unheeded, unacted upon, derided,
and ignored to the delight of military and police intelligence operators and their
assets who seem to exist outside the control of the Philippine governmental
hierarchy.

At any rate, for whatever informative purposes it may serve, I wish to share below a
recent article on the convention on the elimination of discrimination against women
(CEDAW) which appeared last week in the Sunday magazine of the Philippine Daily
Inquirer involving the rape case of a prominent businesswoman in Mindanao Island.

FEATURE

Crying Rape for the Third Time

By Clarissa V. Militante, Lalaine Padilla

Philippine Daily Inquirer

First Posted 11:37:00 11/07/2009

Karen Vertido suffered a second rape in court when she recounted her 1996 ordeal.
This time around, shes bracing herself to recount her rape anew by filing a
communication with a United Nations body that seeks changes in the countrys
justice system.

ONE night of terror was the rape one woman suffered in 1996. The trial was an
eight-year ordeal she had to endure when she decided file a case, feeling violated
all over again, only to be denied justice with the acquittal of her alleged rapist.

Now Karen Vertido has dared yet again to seek justice, and is willing to give an
account of her rape and victimization anew by her own government, she says.
This time around, Karen hopes to get justice through a communication she has filed
under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (OP-CEDAW). The Philippines became a signatory to
this UN treaty on July 17, 1980, and ratified it on July 19, 1981.

A communication is an instrument through which individuals or groups may petition

the CEDAW Committee to act on certain cases, with the primary condition that all
national remedies have been exhausted. The other instrument provided for in the
protocol is the inquiry procedure, which may be used for cases of serious or
systematic violation of womens rights and/or discrimination against women by a
State Party or any of its apparatus or agency.

The Karen Vertido communication is the first rape case filed under OP-CEDAW in
November 2007. The communication to the CEDAW Committee seeks personal
remedies for Vertido, as well as far reaching changes in Philippine laws, in the
justice system and in the realm of social-political culture.

In her communication that Vertido prepared with lead counsel Evalyn Ursua, she
asserts: I hold this state, the Philippines, accountable for rape happening within
its boundaries. I hold my state accountable for a judge who at best is ignorant about
laws and the realities of women, and who may be corrupt at worst. I call on my state
not to put such people to become judges, but only people who are truly capable of
trying womens cases. I claim every inalienable right and every right this country
promised to me as its citizen, from protection of my body, my livelihood, to
protection of my honor. I claim restitution for having been violated first by one
depraved man, and then later by a society that says it is okay to rape women

The document recounts Vertidos testimony of the events that took place on the
night of April 26, 1996, when she claims to have been raped by Davao businessman
Jose Custodio after a social gathering they both attended as members of the Davao
Chamber of Commerce.

Informed by the CEDAW Committee in February 2008 about the Vertido

communication, the government replied in July 2008, that Vertido could have
availed herself of the special remedy of certiorari for grave abuse of discretion
under Section 1, Rule 65

of the Revised Rules of Court to question a verdict of acquittal.

Ursua, however, argues that such a claim is misleading because, among others, the
remedy of certiorari is not a matter of right, but is an extraordinary remedy only
granted by judicial discretion. She added that a certiorari applies on errors of
jurisdiction and not of judgment, as seen in this case.

Vertido and her supporters claim that the judge based her decision upon gender
based-myths and misconceptions about rape and its victims, and in bad faith,
distorted the evidence submitted.

In her own words during the Unifem Launch of the Progress of the Worlds Women
Report and Making the MDGs Work for All in February 2009, Vertido described her
trial from 1997 to 2005 as rape all over again: rape of honor and the last vestiges
of respectability by defense lawyers, by a doubting, unsympathetic judge.

A report made by the non-government organization Womens Legal Bureau noted

some of the myths that the judge used as bases for acquitting accused rapist Jose
Custodio:

That a rape victim must try to escape at every opportunity;

To be raped by means of intimidation, the victim should be timid or easily cowered

which, according to the judge in Vertidos case, she was not (basing this perception
on the fact that Vertido was a career woman and married, and therefore no longer a
young and naive virginal maiden);

To be raped by means of threat, there must be a clear evidence of direct threat,

which the judge says the complainant failed to establish;

That because the victim and the accused are more than nodding acquaintances
the sexual act must then be consensual;

That the victim should prove she physically resisted all throughout the act of rape,
and if she had not, it is to be concluded that she had consented.

As author of the communication, Vertido is no longer asking for the indictment of

the acquitted Custodio, but for the Philippines to implement changes in accordance
with its commitment to CEDAW.
The Karen Vertido case may not be a special one, but whatever happens, [the
communication will make a difference not only in the Philippines but in other Asian
countries as well, as it can pave the way for other Filipinos and Asians to see the
concreteness of the Protocol in their lives, explains Ursua.

Asked why she continued the fight for justice despite the pain it has already caused
her for almost a decade now, Vertido said, It could have been anybody else but
this landed on my lap. I fight because I am given the opportunity to make this world
more respectful of women. Womens Feature Service