The International Labor Organization or ILO was created in 1919 as part of the Treaty of Versailles to end World War I and it became a specialized agency of the United Nations in 1946. Its constitution was drafted by the Labor Commission of the American Federation of Labor for the UN’s member states.
Its aims were to be the world’s parliament on all work-related issues, promote rights in the workplace, encourage decent employment opportunities, enhance social protection, and strengthen dialogue among workers, employers, and government.
ILO holds its annual conference in Geneva, Switzerland attended by tripartite representatives of member states to set labor standards and policies through the issuance of conventions to be ratified by each country member.
In the June 2023 conference, a Philippine militant labor group submitted a lengthy report on “alleged” acts of violence against union leaders and labor movements, the worsening labor regime, and the near-total breakdown of the justice system in the country. The report was a voluminous document of 43 pages with seven sections that contained citations of human rights violations and painted a grim picture of the Philippines as a “fascist” and a “failed state.”
The report covered the period of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s administration. The Executive Summary put in a nutshell all claimed human rights violations committed by and on behalf of the government such as the “unlawful or arbitrary killings or extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, torture, arbitrary detention, harsh and life-threatening conditions in prisons, unlawful and arbitrary interference in one’s privacy, significant problems with the independence of the judiciary, the worst forms of restrictions of free expression and the press, including violence, and threats of violence, unjustified arrests and prosecution of journalists, censorship, and the existence of criminal libel laws, corruption, and the unlawful recruitment and use of child soldiers by terrorists and groups in rebellion against the government.”
In sum, a country in complete chaos that requires foreign intervention to solve.
ILO has had an office in the Philippines since 1970 manned by a country CEO with an ample professional staff and partnership linkages with local tripartite partners. When the ILO governing body in Geneva dignified the above complaints and crafted a formal indictment against the Philippines in its official record entitled, “Country Report On Human Rights Practices,” it was perceived to have rudely bypassed and discredited its Philippine office.
Perhaps ILO could have been more circumspect by waiting for its Philippine office to officially investigate, endorse, reject, or offer clarificatory notes on the complaints.
Instead, with great fanfare, ILO formed a high-level mission to come to the Philippines. It summoned the DoLE and all stakeholders, including the military, to a hearing on the allegations contained in the report. It gave the Philippine government a deadline of 30 September this year to submit a formal report.
Such a “hearing” does not promote genuine dialogue and cooperation — a cornerstone principle of the ILO — among the parties concerned to address together the issues at hand. Rather, it creates an adversarial relationship and promotes divisiveness and conflict between the “accuser” and the accused,” as the proclaimed “high tribunal” decides on who is to be believed. It may even damage the real spirit and process of tripartism in the country which had long been painstakingly established and was working.
The complainants know fully well the saying, “perception is reality.” Thus, there could be a method in the seeming insanity of submitting a half-studied report about alleged “atrocities,” expecting the world to immediately condemn the Philippines and drive foreign investments away.
Even if DoLE truthfully and completely disproves all the accusations presented by the ILO high-level mission, the country’s image as an investment and tourist destination has been raked over the coals by our own countrymen who viciously and knowingly assaulted the integrity of our country.
If we were in a wartime situation, such horrible conduct of “washing of dirty linen in public,” to use a French metaphor, to humiliate a country of birth is an act of treason. And even in peacetime, a citizen impugning his own country’s honor on the world stage is a shameful and unpatriotic act, especially when one knows that there is a dynamic and fully functioning justice system and government with an overwhelming mandate from the people.
Perhaps, our comrades who submitted the “report” to ILO Geneva could have been afflicted with Oikophobia, a Greek word for hate of one’s own country.
Or they could have forgotten that our country is like a mother expecting unconditional love from its children to the point of martyrdom. The last line of our national anthem says it all: “Aming ligaya na pag may mang-aapi ang mamatay ng dahil sa iyo.”