So I realise that this is only my second blog but really, who has time to blog when you are working this hard during the day and having so much fun at night? Last week Shivani and I just finished the major component of the work we were doing with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This means that we have finished writing all the chapters that Ateno needed us to write and the text is now being sent for review before it get published for this years students to use. As of right now, our work for the class should be limited to in class sessions such as guest lecturing on Articles of the Convention or giving the current Canadian perspective on different areas of child rights. For example, later this month the class will be having a “right to life” debate where we will present the way that Canada currently deals with abortion.

For the remainder of our internship we will be spending most of our time working on the ASEAN human rights monitoring mechanism. Ateno and the Philippines wants this mechanism to “have teeth” and have a higher standard of human rights while at the same time reflecting that it will focus on ASEAN countries. The difficulty is that many ASEAN countries have a lower than average view of human rights meaning that any human rights monitoring body with teeth would not be supported by ASEAN members. We have been assigned the research that Ateno hopes will remedy this problem. The idea is to find as much common ground amongst ASEAN nations as possible and use it as a starting point for any future mechanism. Shivani and I are each taking half of the ASEAN countries and are compiling documents that will show which countries support which rights the most and by how much. We are looking at which human rights treaties these countries have ratified, their reports, the reports from the various committees and any third party information that is available. The final result of our research will be used to determine how to make a human rights monitoring body that is has more power than those bodies that already exist and is also acceptable to ASEAN nations.

So that covers the work portion, how about the fun? This last weekend was possibly the best in the Philippines so far. We went to Bohol for the weekend where Dan arranged a tour with a local guide. The guide picked us up on motorcycles/dirt bikes at 8:30 at which point Dan and I got a 10 minute lesson which was all that was required to drive this bike all around the island for the next 11 hours. I found this particularly funny because I have watched friends in Canada struggle under motorcycle licensing and regulation for 6 months before they were allowed to do what we were allowed to do after 10 minutes of training. The guide took us all of the most exciting places on the island starting with the Tarsier Sanctuary. For those that don’t know the tarsier is a small mammal that only lives in a few South East Asian Nations. It turns out that tarsiers do not survive in captivity and do not like being touched by humans so at the sanctuary we got to see them in their natural environment without hurting them. Later that day we crossed the Loboc River on a hanging bridge which was not that exciting but on the other side there was a guy that would de-husk a coconut with his teeth in 15 seconds which was amazing and definitely worth the ₱100 donation. The best part of the day was when we actually saw the Chocolate Hills. They have built a tourist site at the tallest one and we went up there to take pictures but driving up a paved road to get to the top was not enough of an experience for Dan so he and the tour guide found another, undeveloped hill and we climbed to the top. Since I am from Manitoba I hate any sort of an incline and would actually prefer if the world was flat so this was quite an experience for me. The hill was probably at a 70° incline and we had to pull outselves up by the grass that was growing out of the hill. However, with the help of some local children (who ran circles around us and climbed the hill in flip-flops) we made it to the top and it was incredible. After that we stayed with the children for a bit, met their families, learned about their lives and gave them a couple pesos for their help getting us up the hill. This was the second day in the Philippines that is currently vying for the most incredible day of my life.

Shivani is leaving soon so we are trying to get in as much as we can before she goes. Next weekend is a long weekend in Palawan and the weekend after that should be white water rafting to see the rice terraces. I look forward to my last month here and look forward to telling you all about it.

posted by Tim Hudek  # 2:41 AM