Suchergebnisse

Amid the bluster of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte over the past year, a clearer picture emerged in 2017 of the leader and the direction he wants the country to take. Duterte may be a popular shaker and change-maker, but for the most part, he has also proven to be a divisive president.

The world has seen a dramatic increase in immigration levels towards settler countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia. Such levels of immigration are likely to exacerbate the multicultural concerns of states and societies in the world. Migration multiculturalism is the focus of this paper. It looks at the way that migration impacts upon the cultural diversity of many communities today. Does migration multiculturalism pose a serious challenge to the development of society? Does migration multiculturalism represent a threat upon states to foster a singular and coherent national community? States have become the primary gatekeepers to determine who gets to enter and stay as well as be entitled to citizenship rights. Looking at the conditions of multiculturalism in Australia, Japan, and Malaysia, the paper argues that destination countries are grappling with the problematic of how their states will reconstitute their respective societies given the increasing influx of other Asians and non-Whites as well as the reality of their declining fertility rate and the need to transform their economies to maintain overall competitiveness in the global market.

The Filipino struggle for human dignity and sovereignty continues as illustrated by the extent to which the rights of innumerable workers now employed and living overseas are being violated. The paper will attempt to outline the evolution of the human rights of Filipino migrants overseas culminating in the formulation of the Overseas Filipinos and Migrant Workers Act of 1995 (Republic Act No. 8042). It will also describe the extent of human rights violations against migrant workers or overseas contract workers (OCWs) by receiving governments. Particular case studies would be domestic workers going to Singapore and Hongkong as well as entertainment workers going to Japan. In addition, the paper will try to trace the involvements of NGOs and POs in advocating the rights and welfare of Filipinos overseas and their families. The paper will argue that the difficulties encountered by Filipino revolutionaries at the turn of the century are the same problems confronting human rights advocates in the Philippines, namely that human rights advocacy must necessarily confront the powers of sovereign states including the restrictive economies of receiving countries.

This paper attempts to scrutinize the democratic practices of non-governmental and people's organizations (NGOs and POs)—groups that claim to represent the interest of 'the people'. It finds a need to do so in light of the democratization wave sweeping across most of the Third World. A clear need to understand the changing patterns of accountability, responsibility, and control between the previously dominant state and the many subdivisions of civil society is unmistakably emerging. This is a matter of particular concern in the Philippines, as its Constitution provides a definite mandate for NGOs and POs. The Local Government Code of the Philippines also provides the legal infrastructure for and the institutionalization of NGO-PO participation in local governance, legally formalizing the collaborative and interventionist roles of NGOs and POs. Such formalization has yielded positive results. Still, there remains much room for improvement as regards the substantive partnership of Local Government Units and the NGO-PO community in the Philippines.

The contemporary conflict situation embedded in the social fabric of Mindanao in the southern part of the Philippines is rooted in the historical, systematic, and collective marginalisation and minoritisation of the indigenous Filipino Muslims or Moros and native Lumad peoples. This paper argues that the minoritisation of the erstwhile indigenous and majority Moros as well as the non-Christian and non-Muslim Lumads of Mindanao was the result of a series of deliberate programs to voluntarily resettle or repopulate the area with predominantly Christian migrants from Luzon and the Visayas (i.e., the northern and central parts of the country, respectively). This numerical domination of the indigenous Moro (and Lumad) minorities by nonindigenous (and predominantly Christian) settlers was exacerbated by (and may have in fact produced the conditions for) economic deprivation of the indigenous Moro and Lumad peoples.


The paper also argues that the armed and violent conflict in Mindanao has led to large-scale and involuntary out-migration (particularly from the areas of direct and heavy conflict) mainly in the form of human displacements and movements (primarily involving Moros and Lumads who are non-combatants) out of the conflict zones. This paper illustrates the dynamics of how conflict situations interface with human migratory flows. More specifically, it makes the observation that the conflict in Mindanao is rooted in the voluntary inmigration to the area which eventually led to the minoritisation of the indigenous Moro and Lumad peoples. Moreover, as a consequence of the conflict, there has been a large-scale and involuntary movement outward or away from the conflict areas.