PCHR distorts the meaning of its ‘independent’ status

BY declaratively opposing the presidential decision to withdraw the Philippine government from the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court, the Philippine Commission on Human Rights (PCHR) not only challenges a lawful and constitutional policy decision, it is also provoking a litigation in the Supreme Court of the legitimacy of its creation and its powers.

This is a formal argument whose time has surely come, because the contradictions between the commission and the government of the day have reached an outrageous limit.