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Outrage over 'green' award for Philippine president


President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

The UK-based Working Group on Mining in the Philippines - which includes church groups - has written letters of complaint to the Chief Executives of two organisations which gave a 'green' award to the Philippine president at the US Congress in Washington yesterday.

The Washington-based International Conservation Caucus Foundation (ICCF) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) gave President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Award for "innovative leadership to protect the
oceans and preserve the biodiversity of the coral triangle" in South-East Asia.

In letters to Bill Archer, Chairman of the ICCF, and to Monique Barbut, Chief Executive Officer and Chairperson of the GEF, the group suggested that honouring President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as a conservationist and protector of biodiversity is akin to giving a fox an award for chicken husbandry. Signatories said it would damage the reputation of the awarding organisations among all those who know the recent history and current situation in the Philippines and the role of the President in worsening that situation. President Arroyo, in their view, has led a deeply corrupt regime that has promoted and profited from environmental despoilation by mining, logging, overfishing and the promotion of unsustainable plantation production. In particular, the scale of her promotion of mining and the associated corruption have placed large areas of critical mega-biodiverse ecosystems
under severe stress, depriving indigenous and other poor communities of their right to food and subsistence and subjecting them to militarization to impose her policies.

For evidence, the group refers to their two reports: Mining in the Philippines: Concerns and Conflicts, 2007; and Philippines: Mining or Food?, 2009: www.eccr.org.uk/Publications

The Working Group also points out that under her nine-year rule, President Arroyo has also presided over a regime internationally condemned for its human rights record, including the assassination, disappearance, and murder of legal opposition figures and local community leaders. The Philippines has also become, according to Amnesty International, one of the world's worst regimes for the killing of journalists. According to Transparency International it is now a notoriously corrupt state.

The Letter Signatories are:
Rt Revd Michael Doe, General Secretary of USPG: Anglicans in World Mission,
Rachel Parry, Advocacy Officer of USPG: Anglicans in World Mission,
Fr Frank Nally, Faith & Justice Office of the Missionary Society of St Columban,
Geoff Nettleton, Co-ordinator of Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links (PIPLinks),
Cathal Doyle, Researcher at the University of Middlesex Law Department,
Miles Litvinoff, Co-ordinator Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility (ECCR).

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