JOSE “Pepe”DIOKNO Basics of HUMAN RIGHTS

ON HUMAN RIGHTS 1. Rights of Man

-JOSE DIOKNO
Human Rights
 More than legal concepts
 Essence of man
 They are what make man human.
 Human Rights in the Philippines:
 “as if Filipinos exist for the
economy and the state, and not
the reverse.”
 “as if Filipinos were less human
than the men and women of the
West.”
Government’s success:
 Mass Media
 Ignorance
Five Great International Documents
 Universal Declaration of Human Rights
 International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights
 International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights
 Declaration and Action Programme on
the Establishment of a New
International Economic Order
 Economic Rights and Duties of State
Two Great National Documents
 Malolos Constitution of 1898
 Philippine Constitution of 1935
Basics of HUMAN RIGHTS
1. Rights of Man
2. Rights of the People
A. Right to Life
B. Right to Dignity
C. Right to Develop Ourselves
2. Rights of the People
A. Right to survive
B. Right to self-determination
C. Right to develop as a people
3. On Government only as an agent of
society
A. Right to life
a) Right to health
b) Right to own property
c) Right to form trade union and to strike
d) Right to social security
e) Right to rest and leisure
f) Right to move about freely within our country
and to leave and return to it
g) Right to establish a family and to exercise the
rights of parents.
B. Right to dignity
a) Right to recognition everywhere as a person
b) Right to honor and reputation
c) Right to freedom of thought
d) Right of conscience
e) Right of religion
f) Right of opinion and expression
g) Right to seek, receive, and impart information
h) Right to peaceful assembly with our fellows
i) Right to equal treatment before the law
j) Right to privacy in our family, our home, and
our correspondence
k) Right to freedom from slavery, torture, and
cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment, as
well as from arbitrary arrest, detention or exile
l) Right to be presumed innocent of crime or
wrong
m) Right to fair trial, and so forth
C. Right to develop ourselves
a) Right to an education
b) Right to share in the cultural life of our
community
c) Right to form associations with our fellow
d) Right to live in a national and international
order that allows all of our rights to flower and
be respected
A. Right to survive
B.Right to self-determination
a) People’s rights to sovereign equality in
international affairs and international
organizations
b) People’s Right to freedom from all forms of
racial discriminations
c) People’s Right to political independence and
freedom from colonialism, neocolonialism, alien

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 domination and intervention in our national RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE
affairs  Our Survival Not in Our Hands
d) People’s Right to sovereignty over our natural  Economic Policy Decided by Aliens
resources and over all economic activities
How can we do so?
e) People’s Right to control the activities of foreign
investors and transnational corporations
Two strategies:
f) People’s Right to nationalize and expropriate 1. Convince the government to change
their assets policies
g) People’s Right to freely choose and change our 2. Change the government
political, social, and cultural and economic
How?
systems.
o As individual
C. Right to develop as a people
a) People’s Right to choose the goals and means o As a group
of development A Filipino Concept of JUSTICE
b) People’s Right to industrialize the economy
c) People’s Right to implement social and JUSTICE
economic reforms that ensure the participation
of all the people in the process and benefits of John Rawls:
development “…is the first virtue of social institutions…laws and
d) People’s Right to share in scientific and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged
technological advances of the world must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.”
e) And as a former colony, People’s Right to
Social Justice:
reparation and retribution for the exploitation
How to distribute the burdens and benefits of social life.
RIGHTS OF MAN
 Rank?
1. Economic, social and cultural rights
2. Civil and political rights  Merit?
Some of man’s individual rights are absolute, others  Deeds or Needs?
are not. …yet justice must somehow be done if society is to hold
Absolute- cannot be limited in any way together…otherwise anarchy or dictatorship.

under any circumstances, not even Filipinos on JUSTICE

under the gravest of emergencies. (we can look to our language and to our history)
Limited- to preserve social life  Katarungan (from Visayan ‘tarong’)
 Karapatan (from ‘dapat’)
Conditions for the limitations:  Batas
 They must be provided by law  Kapangyarihan
 They must be necessary to preserve society,
Cham Perelman:
or protect public health, public morals, or
Justice- principle of action in accordance with
similar rights of others
which being of one and the same essential
 They must not exceed what is strictly
category must be treated in the same way
necessary to achieve their purpose.
Aristotle:
How well do human rights fare in our country?
Justice-treating equals equally and unequals
unequally but in proportion to their relevant
RIGHTS OF MAN
differences.
 Salvaging
 Poor Health
HISTORY OF OUR PEOPLE:
 Unemployment 1. First, a society which is not only
 Low Wages independent but in which the people are
 Exploitation sovereign
 Suppressing Dissent

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 2. Second, a society which respects the III. Standards we should judge the content of
freedom and equal dignity of all “laws, policies and institutions that seek justice
3. Third, a society which protects workers and in the Philippines.
tenants, opposes oppression, exploitation
and abuse, and seeks to eliminate poverty.
4. Fourth, a society which is united in
brotherhood and self-reliant
Three Ways SOCIAL INJUSTICE is committed:
a. By not having a system of law at all, BUT IT IS NOT ENOUGH. There is POVERTY and
written or unwritten, or one so flawed
INEQUALITY. 
that people do not know what their
legal rights and duties are
Laws, policies and institutions must consciously
b. By not enforcing law fairly
c. By enacting law that does not pursue
strive, by effective means:
the social values that constitute the
 To eradicate poverty
Filipino vision of a just society.
 To select a means of developing and using our
natural resources, our industries and our
THE FILIPINO MODEL OF SOCIAL JUSTICE commerce.
 To change those relations and structures of
I. (The Filipino model of SOCIAL JUSTICE relations between man and man, between
groups, and between communities that cause or
comprises the following) REQUIREMENTS for a
perpetuate inequality.
“SYSTEM” to work:
 The authority of the law maker must be
Two Principles Embodied by the Standards:
recognized by the majority of the people as
legitimate, and the laws enacted must not 1. The principle of reparation to repair
exceed the limits on the authority imposed by injustice
the prevailing consensus 2. A principle of change that look forward
 Laws must be published or made known to the
to effect the internal and external
persons who are to be affected by them
 Laws must not be changed so often or so
revolutions to attain the aspiration
quickly that people cannot reasonably base (written by Jacinto) that a Filipinos’
plans on them worth, who he is, should not depend on
 Laws must be understandable and not what he was.
contradictory.
Neither principle advocates or intends to
Six Types of Court Decisions
abolish all inequality. IT IS NOT REALISTIC!
1. Analytic
 But we can change human relations and
2. Intuitive
actions.
3. Aleatory
INDIVIDUALITY in the Filipino psyche
4. Pusillanimous
Neither principle seeks to do away with
5. Venal
government or law.
6. Asinine
 It is through honest governments
II. Standards to eliminate or, given the frailty of
enforcing just laws that the principles
men, to drastically reduce the last four kinds of
would be translated into actual justice.
judgments. It also includes standards to infuse
courage, competence and integrity into
lawyers…

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