Public Interest Law Center (PILC) lawyers call to reactivate the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC), the mechanism established to monitor the implementation of the Comprehensive Agreement on Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL). The CARHRIHL is the agreement signed by National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and Government of the Republic of Philippines (GRP) in 1998.

The JMC is the CARHRIHL mechanism ensuring the investigation of human rights violation cases. The call to reactivate the committee comes amid the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) killing of 19 individuals in Toboso, Negros Occidental on April 19.

“The killing of unarmed civilians, as well as of combatants who are injured, captured, have surrendered, or are otherwise incapacitated and unable to fight, constitutes a grave violation of human rights and international humanitarian law,” the PILC stated on April 29. “Likewise, the forced displacement of civilian communities is a serious breach of these legal protections.”

Lawyers say these incidents also violate the CARHRIHL. The CARHRIHL provisions include formation and reactivation of the JMC.

Farmers’ appalling landlessness fuels the country’s armed conflict, they add. “The killings and the forced displacement of hundreds of families amid ongoing military operations in Negros suggest a reliance on a predominantly military approach to addressing the conflict.”

PILC ultimately calls for return to peace talks to resolve the roots of the armed conflict.