If we go by the 1987 Constitution, the Commission on Human Rights is tasked to investigate on its own, or on complaint by any party, all human rights violations involving civil and political rights.
What we know is that civil and political rights include freedom of speech, of expression, and of the press and the right of the people to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.
They also include the right of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the right not to be served a search warrant or warrant of arrest without probable cause.
But the CHR appears to have expanded on its own the scope of its mandate under the 1987 Constitution by also tackling economic and social rights covered by an international covenant initiated by the United Nations.
And, not to forget, the UN also has an international covenant on the Right to Development.
Not that we’re complaining.
In fact, the CHR’s self-declared expanded mandate to investigate the people’s right to be protected from the climate crisis serves the public good and the national interest.
The CHR, an independent constitutional body, was well within its right to conduct a National Inquiry on Climate Change. This is the world’s first inquiry into corporate responsibility for the climate crisis.
The CHR’s NICC Report found the world’s fossil fuel companies to have “obfuscated, obstructed, derailed and delayed” efforts to transition to renewable energy sources, undermining the people’s right to be protected against the climate crisis.
That’s a searing indictment of the big oil companies who have thus far escaped responsibility for the climate crisis.
The landmark report declared that climate change adversely affected the human rights of Filipinos to life, food and water security, as well as to development.
The report was the CHR’s response to a petition by environmentalists led by Greenpeace to examine the impacts of climate change on the human rights of the Filipino people and the responsibility of major fossil-fuel companies.
The petitioners held 47 companies liable for driving the climate crisis and the harms it produced. They included the world’s largest multinational carbon companies – Chevron, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, Peabody Energy, Total and Console Energy Inc.
The inquiry found the largest fossil fuel producers to have “engaged in willful obfuscation of climate science” that prejudiced the public’s right to make informed decisions about their products and concealed the “significant harm” these had on the environment and climate system.
The CHR took seven years to finish the inquiry because companies were unwilling to engage with the agency CHR on the grounds of jurisdiction and territoriality, and refused to acknowledge that climate change involved civil and political rights.
But the CHR stood pat on its stand that “in truth and in fact, all human rights are interdependent and interconnected,” and that several international laws, treaties and principles “already confirm that states have the responsibility to mitigate climate change impacts in a manner anchored on human rights.”
The CHR deserves commendation for initiating this inquiry and contributing in no small measure to our deeper understanding of the climate crisis.