Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you. Honourable chair and members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me again to appear before you. Receiving an award or recognition for one's work is undoubtedly an occasion for great satisfaction and joy, but this time it is also with a sobering thought that t

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes, we are quite active now in the regional discourse. It is our message that we are a cautionary tale for women. This is apparently not an aberration, because when I go to other countries in Asia, the taxi driver, the tour guide and even a parliamentarian will tell me they like

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  They need to talk to women who are in the resistance. They're not talking to us. The livelihood projects stay on the livelihood level. When you have a regime that looks at women this way, those livelihoods will only go up to a certain place. Duterte has chilled even the diploma

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  We continue to count on that. We will continue to hold to the ICC's declaration that the crimes committed before he withdrew are still subject to reckoning. It is one of the things that we hold on to, that reckoning will happen, if not today then some time in the future, if not i

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  So far, in the Philippines, women have stood out faster and more consistently. It also so happens that some of the most crucial institutions were headed by women at the time that he took office. Of course, that has caused him to say, for example, after the ousting the Chief Justi

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  We do not see that in the diplomatic community at home. Even the small mission-funded projects are looking and recognizing that, in fact, we have a different threat that faces us now.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Every time, you think twice, but I think you have no choice. I have fought all my life. I fought the Marcos dictatorship. I did it for my children. I now have a grandchild, and I cannot imagine my grandchild being raised where I could not let him listen to the president, not bein

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes, they have taken the lead because the government institutions that are supposed to be doing this are not. We have a Philippine women's commission that is supposed to be the guardian of the Magna Carta of Women, but they have been quiet. Of course, he appoints the people. He

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I would like to see the Canadian embassy, for example, get more engaged in the democratic discourse at home. We hear it from outside; we don't hear it from your representatives inside the Philippines. We are aware of your programs for women and their livelihoods, but there's a bi

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Just—

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  In fact, that's why we're saying that the international arena for recourse is so important and that it not give up.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  He curses them. He has cursed the ICC prosecutor. He has cursed the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. But you're out there; he cannot really harm you.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  It's important that you keep on going. It was very well appreciated at home when several parliaments....and I believe the chair was the one who sponsored the bill on Senator de Lima. We picked that up.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  We picked that up. It gives us spirit. It gives us hope that people are not forgetting that we are getting darker and darker.