On Making the Legal
System Accessible to Indigenous Peoples
The Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) welcomes
the recent move of Chief Justice Reynato Puno to hold a workshop
on socio-economic rights of marginalized sectors, including indigenous
peoples in the light of making the justice system accessible to
the poor.
For the CPA, this move may help in giving the indigenous
peoples the justice that the State has denied them. It may help
in giving justice for the decades of national oppression they have
suffered under the past and present regimes that have systematically
denied them of their right to ancestral land and self determination.
While addressing socio-economic rights, this initiative also looks
into making the law and the courts accessible to all especially
the poor and marginalized sectors. One, it should look into impediments
such as the high cost of litigation including standard filing and
appeal fees and lawyer's fees. Two, it should find out why the wheels
of justice grind very slow. As it is, the courts are jammed to the
brim.
However, for such an initiative to be truly meaningful,
it should address the issue of ancestral land rights. This would
involve a review of existing government laws, policies and programs
that impact on indigenous peoples. Specifically, it would call for
the review of the application of the Constitutional provision that
institutionalized the Regalian Doctrine that declares all lands
within the archipelago as belonging to the State. Government and
private businesses have exploited this provision to their advantage,
and to further dispossess indigenous peoples of their ancestral
lands on the mere absence of paper titles. In fact, the Regalian
Doctrine has failed for generations to give recognition since time
immemorial possession and development of ancestral lands by the
indigenous peoples.
This Constitutional provision has been the basis
of laws on land and resources such as the Philippine Mining Act
of 1995 (R.A. 7942) that allows the unhampered entry of mining corporations
and plunder of indigenous territories. Another law is the P.D. 705
or the Revised Forestry Code enacted during the time of the Marcos
Dictatorship that classified all lands above 18% in slope as forests
thus public lands. Given the terrain of the Cordillera, this law
made at least 80% of the Cordillera lands as forests. This made
the Igorots squatters in their own lands.
The recognition of indigenous peoples' rights entails
the recognition of their indigenous socio-political systems, especially
the existing and effective indigenous justice systems. This must
be regarded, over the imposition of the legal justice system in
areas where it is not effective or applicable. #
Reference:
Beverly L. Longid
Chairperson
Cordillera Peoples Alliance
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