Davao’s ‘conscience’

Last Thursday, Dec. 10, was International Human Rights Day. It also capped the 16-day United Nations-led campaign to end violence against women and girls. This year’s commemoration of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights has the theme: “Recover better—Stand up for Human Rights.”

The theme is in keeping with recovery efforts across many parts of the world that are still reeling from the destruction COVID-19 has wrought. On its webpage, the UN has declared that for this year, the standards of human rights should be the focus of recovery efforts in the wake of the massive crisis the pandemic has caused.

The UN recognizes that the pandemic has exposed pre-existing governance deficits in many countries in the world. Thus, it strongly exhorts governments of these countries to ensure that human rights standards are applied in efforts to heal and recover from the pandemic. It believes that countries can recover better only when they use such standards to “tackle entrenched, systematic and intergenerational inequalities, exclusion and discrimination.”

In keeping with the universal commemoration of International Human Rights Day, more than 100 women from Davao City signed a statement strongly urging national leaders, especially President Duterte, to “stop the verbal abuse, insults, sexist jokes, and other forms of sexual harassment against women and girls!” Majority of the women signatories are active gender rights advocates, notably from a civil society group called “Konsyensya Dabaw” (literally, Davao’s conscience, or the conscience of Davao).

Among others, the statement noted that Davao City is the first local government in the country to legislate a Gender and Development Code in 1997. Such move has been considered “trailblazing,” and has become a model for other local government units in the country. To top it all, such a milestone legislation that supported the advocacy toward upholding the human rights of women in the city was signed by then Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, now President of the country. Ironically, he is the country’s main purveyor of sexist jokes, misogynistic, and other debasing comments on women, trivializing their role in society.

Konsyensya Dabaw’s statement is also trailblazing in that it has expressed in the open what many people in that star city of the south have not declared in public, perhaps because of the prevailing culture of silence. For a long time, then Mayor and now President Duterte has been known widely for his off-color, racist, sexist, and debasing jokes that have become the salt and pepper of his official speeches.

Moreover, the statement also noted that the behavior of the President and other national leaders who tend to normalize sexist language through jokes and insensitive comments are “detrimental when rape and other forms of gender-based violence are increasing in many communities as women cope with the additional burdens of addressing the impacts of COVID 19.”

The statement highlighted the case of a 15-year-old girl who was arrested for violating quarantine protocols in Davao City, and was allegedly raped by two barangay tanod (community volunteer watchmen). It also cited a UN Population Fund report on the pattern of alarming cases of gender-based violence in the country at this time of the pandemic.

Among the cities in Mindanao, Davao City has one of the highest number of COVID-19 positive cases, despite very stiff quarantine and localized lockdowns in some of its barangays.

Women signatories of the statement lamented the President’s misogynistic behavior, since this has somehow become a flawed standard of conduct not only among government officials, but also among ordinary people, and even among some male children.

Interestingly, the statement does not include the signature of a prominent Davao woman leader, its current mayor, Sara Duterte, the presidential daughter. I just wonder whether as a woman, the Davao mayor approves of her father’s unconscionable sexist behavior. But as a Dabaweña, shouldn’t she also embody the city’s “conscience,” to call out such undesirable and derisive remarks that are directed against her as a woman?

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