DBM: Special rights laws funded

THE DEPARTMENT of Budget and Management (DBM) has provided funding to special human rights for next year, a Budget official said, clarifying an earlier claim by the Commission of Human Rights (CHR) that special rights measures were unfunded under their proposed P1.1-billion budget for 2025.

The CHR in early September said that special human rights laws, including measures addressing human trafficking, violence against women and their children and crimes against humanity, did not receive a single centavo under the proposed P6.352-trillion 2025 national budget.

“The special laws being claimed by the CHR as unfunded are laws already integrated and part of the regular programs of the agency which are annually provided funding under the General Appropriations Act,” DBM Undersecretary Godess Hope Libiran said in a Viber message last week.

“The CHR represented that funding requirements for said laws are sourced from the existing programs of the CHR since the same are already part of the mandate of the agency,” she added.

The government has provided P471 million for the fulfillment for the commission’s human rights protection and promotion programs this year, according to document provided by Ms. Libiran. — Kenneth Christiane L. Basilio