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Kasama Masthead

KASAMA means friend, companion, comrade...
KASAMA December 2009
Volume 23 Number 4
 

Women are Agents of ChangeWomen are Agents of Change

17 December 2009 - Leaders from around the world gathered for a photo opportunity demonstrating their support for gender equality in the global climate change agreement. The 2009 UN Climate Change Conference was held at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark from 7 to 18 December. The conference included the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 5th Meeting of the Parties (COP/MOP 5) to the Kyoto Protocol.

 

ISIS Newsletter Logo Women Discouraged by COP Outcome – But Committed to Hope & Action for 2010

23 December 2009 - The lives of millions of people are at stake, entire nations are expected to disappear under the ocean, and yet world leaders in Copenhagen failed to commit to necessary measures for an equitable, just and legally binding post–Kyoto agreement to tackle climate change.

 

Botolan Floods The Truth is in the Floods

by Fr. Shay Cullen

December 09, 2009 –The truth about climate change is essential to the Copenhagen Conference and its aftermath. The nations of the world have not reached a comprehensive breakthrough agreement but the world desperately needs one to greatly reduce the outpouring of greenhouse gasses.
 

Tublay, Benguet (Photo: Mikara Kaye Jubay) Responding to the Environmental Extremes & the Economics of the Times

Part 1 – March 22, 2009
It's the growing season in tropical Asia with early harvests of rice in the lowlands and corn in the uplands. The memory of the two storms that caused area devastation in the Philippines at the beginning of the year has faded and the landscape looks one of abundance.

Part 2 – November 4, 2009
In a span of two months from late September to early November, the Philippines was hit by three typhoons that flooded the majority of Manila and Central Luzon, and caused massive landslides in Northern Luzon. The enormous volumes of rainfall swelled rivers and the water released from overflowing dams inundated towns and cities along waterways and settled in floodplains. Landslides in mountain areas buried villages. Relief and rescue efforts were stretched to breaking point, and a state of calamity was declared. The death toll was around 700, with thousands rendered homeless, and the total damage is in billions of pesos.
 

Climate Action Now!Global Day of Action on Climate Change

Time is running out
CLIMATE ACTION NOW!

On 12 December 2009 over 3,000 events were held around the planet calling on world leaders to produce a fair, ambitious, and binding climate change agreement at the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark.

 

Giving Notebooks to Elementary Students Copenhagen Accord: A Bad Deal Waiting to Happen

Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (KPNE)
21 December 2009:

The climate negotiations in the Fifteenth Conference of Parties (COP 15) in Copenhagen has come to a sour end. The world’s high expectation for a meaningful and binding agreement is doused with icy cold water by a non-binding deal dubbed as “Copenhagen Accord” – a deal primarily brokered by the most powerful and leading polluter country in the world – the United States.

 

Black Ribbon for Maguindanao Massacre Victims The Philippines: After the Maguindanao Massacre

INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP, Asia Briefing N°98, 21 December 2009

The massacre on 23 November 2009 of 57 men and women by the private army of a warlord allied to Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo shocked the country and the world. The immediate trigger for the killings was the decision of one man, Esmail “Toto” Mangudadatu, to run for governor of Maguindanao province, which for the last decade has been the fiefdom of the Ampatuan family. Political patronage by successive governments in Manila, most notably by the Arroyo administration, allowed the Ampatuans to amass great wealth and unchecked power, including the possession of a private arsenal with mortars, rocket launchers and state-of-the-art assault rifles. They controlled the police, the judiciary, and the local election commission. In the wake of the massacre, there are opportunities for new measures in the areas of justice, security and peace. The question is whether anyone in a position of power will seize them.
 

Didipio CHR urged to probe dispersal of Vizcaya anti-mining barricade

Thursday, 15 October 2009

HUMAN rights and environment groups have urged the Philippine Commission on Human Rights to investigate the violent dispersal on October 2 of some 100 anti-mining protesters, most of them members of indigenous groups, by police operatives in Barangay Didipio, Kasibu town in Nueva Vizcaya.


The area hosts the large-scale mining operation of the Australian firm OceanaGold Corporation, whose mining concession covers 23 of Kasibu’s 30 barangays.

 

Didipio CHR Chairperson Leila de Lima visits Didipio, Confirms OceanaGold's human rights violations

Legal Rights & Natural Resources Center-Kasama sa Kalikasan (LRC-KsK)

Press Release, 6 November, 2009

THE RECENT visit of Commission on Human Rights Chairperson Leila de Lima in Didipio last November 5 is commendable and shows seriousness and sincerity on the part of the commission to undertake a top level investigation with regards to complaints of human rights violations committed by OceanaGold Philippines Inc (OceanaGold) against the indigenous peoples’ residents of Barangay Didipio, Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya.

 

CDFVR Reader December 2009 Domestic and family violence and Australian immigration law: A brief summary

by Annie Webster and Lesley Hunt

On 15 October 2007 the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) amended the wording of its Migration Regulation 1.23(2)(b) from relevant domestic violence to relevant family violence to provide consistency with the definition of family violence under the Commonwealth Family Law Act of 1975. Their definition of family violence is as follows:
Family violence means conduct, whether actual or threatened, by a person toward or towards the property of, a member of the person’s family that causes that or any other member of the person’s family reasonably to fear for, or reasonably to be apprehensive about, his or her personal wellbeing or safety.
 

Walden Bello The Migrant Condition

Speech delivered by Walden Bello at the People’s Global Action Conference during the Global Forum for Migration and Development, Athens, Greece, 1st November 2009

The migrant worker experience is one that is increasingly typical. Let’s start with myself. I am now back in the Philippines, but I spent nearly 20 years as a political exile in the United States during the Marcos dictatorship. During that time I survived by working as a journalist, teaching, doing research, and taking on odd jobs in different American cities.


 

Australian Human Rights Commission Logo Australian Human Rights Commission

Commission welcomes outlawing of torture and prohibition of the death penalty

The Australian Human Rights Commission has welcomed the introduction today of the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Torture Prohibition and Death Penalty Abolition) Bill 2009, as a landmark piece of legislation in Australia’s Human Rights protections.

White Ribbon day is more than an awareness day

White Ribbon Ambassadors, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Tom Calma, and Race and Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Graeme Innes, said that today’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women was a vital awareness day that contributed to very real and important outcomes.
 

2010 Seafarer Logo MARITIME UNION OF AUSTRALIA

2010 YEAR OF THE SEAFARER

31 Dec 2009 — The IMO has declared 2010 Year of the Seafarer. But National Secretary of the MUA Paddy Crumlin says to ensure a future for young seafarers, 2010 is the year the Government needs to urgently create incentives for investment in new ships.

ANTI-PIRACY TRAINING FOR FILIPINOS AFTER 470 DEATHS

31 Dec 2009 — Since 2006 470 Filipinos have died at the hands of pirates. Anti piracy training will now be mandatory, a significant move says MUA’s Paddy Crumlin.

NEW YEAR LAWS TO COVER GUESTWORKERS ON OUR COAST

30 Dec 2009 — Australian labour laws will now cover foreign seafarers, guest workers, on ships trading Australian domestic cargo on our coast, in a major victory for Australian shipping and both Australian and international seafarers.
 

Reporting Human Rights in RP Reporting Human Rights in the Philippines


A Field Guide for Journalists and Media Workers

27 May 2009

The Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project launched a practical handbook for journalists and media workers to better report human rights issues, a continuing concern in the Philippines. Entitled “Reporting Human Rights in the Philippines,” the 105-page handbook has been produced as part of the Project’s efforts to increase human rights awareness in the Philippine media and in society at large. It compliments the training, reporting, advocacy and outreach which the Project has been doing for the past 18 months.


 

The Daily PCIJ PCIJ celebrates its 20th Year and mourns the passing of a dear friend and colleague

Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ)

The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism was founded in 1989 by nine Filipino journalists who realized, from their years on the beat and at the news desk, the need for newspapers and broadcast agencies to go beyond day-to-day reportage.

2009 also saw the passing of Alecks Pabico.