This provides an application of the G-Watch monitoring in human rights compliance, particularly on the right to food of the bakwit, or Internally Displaced People.
The Government Watch (G-Watch) of Ateneo School of Government has implemented Bayanihang Eskwela since 2005. The program is a community-based monitoring of the government’s school-building projects that aims to ensure that the right quality of school building projects are implemented at the right time where it is needed most.
The Department of Education (DepEd) has strengthened its partnership with the private sector to achieve its goal of solving the textbook shortage problem this year.
A follow up to the COMELEC Budget Watch in 2009, this study aimed to baseline and benchmark electoral administration spending of COMELEC, in the hope of helping inform COMELEC of relevant performance standards and indicators they should achieve in effectively linking their budget preparation and performance target setting.
This policy study aims to identify key issues in the implementation of the government’s school building program, focusing on the DepEd-led School Building Program for schools experiencing acute classroom shortage and the DPWH enforced Regular School Building Program which is in the ambit of Republic Act No. 7880 or more commonly known as the Roxas Law.
This provides an application of the G-Watch monitoring in human rights compliance, particularly on the right to vote of the detainees (or PDLs, Persons Deprived of Liberties).
The Bayanihang Eskwela Manual provides its readers a clearer idea of how a community-based monitoring of school building projects (SBPs) using the G-Watch approach is done from preparation to the result of the monitoring, the response of concerned agencies on the identified issues and challenges and the feedback of stakeholders.
The implication on this seemingly innocent case of misallocation of projects is arguably a vicious cycle of social injustice where those who in need are further deprived because of their condition of un-having, of not having project pre-requisites such as roads, electricity, land, numbers; while those who have enough or have more are given more because of the condition of having, of being accessible, conducive and having the numbers that bring votes.
The news that the FOI Bill failed was frustrating, but it should serve as a wake up call. Not only that we must make power accountable, we must reconstitute power; for as it is now, the power configuration in our society only allows limited reforms and hardly any radical changes. Important legislations that deepen democracy by giving more power to the people and making the exercise of power more accountable like the FOI Bill will hardly have a chance and our toil to make a difference will be more of the same without making any difference in the existing power structure. This is why it is most critical that while we continue our governance work now, we do not lose sight of the important task of developing our political party system, continuing the political engagement with the new administration and creating a reform-oriented context for the next elections through electoral reform and political education.
This is an attempt to superimpose the Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA) to the Social Accountability approach of G-Watch.
This provides report from the project, COMELEC Budget Watch.