International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples

August 9, 2011

Mr. President,
Today the international community honors the Indigenous Peoples of the world. Today the struggles of the IPs in the Philippines deserve to be spoken and heard in this august Chamber.
We have begun to make significant strides in protecting the rights of our IPs over the past twenty years. After centuries of disregard, Congress passed a landmark legislation called the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997, which restored the rights of indigenous people over their ancestral domains, upheld […]

Read More

Committee Report No. 52 Proposed Senate Resolution No. 546 “Resolution Concurring in the Ratification of the Statute of the International Criminal Court”

August 8, 2011

Mr. President,
It is a rare occasion that the Senate considers an issue that recalls the broad sweep of developments in the last century if only to remind us that it proved to be one of the most violent periods of human history. It was characterized by two world wars, the Korean war, the Vietnam war and its 50 years toward the beginning of the present millennium pervaded by the tension of the Cold War that constantly pushed humanity to […]

Read More

Message of Senator Loren Legarda Opening of the Photo Exhibit VISAGE: Portraits of Filipinos Facing Climate Change By Jose Enrique Soriano

August 3, 2011

(Standard Greetings)
Statistics dominate headlines and discourse on the catastrophes of climate change: inches of rainfall, damages to properties and businesses, costs of livestock and crop destruction, and so on. These are the vital yet ultimately impersonal figures that are often presented to us. Even tolls on people displaced and killed remain just that-disquieting but faceless numbers.
Our exhibit, co-organized by Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities headed by Red Constantino, hopes to […]

Read More