Philippines cuts its human rights budget to £15

By Harriet Agerholm

The Philippines is set to give an annual budget of just 1,000 pesos (£15) to its human rights body amid the country's brutal war on drugs.

The drastic cut to the Commission on Human Rights' (CHR) budget was supported by 119 politicians to just 32 in the country's congress.

But critics say the move is punishment for the body's staunch criticism of President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs and the public body's efforts to investigate thousands of killings over the past 15 months.

The number of deaths has attracted international criticism.

But Pantaleon Alvarez, the speaker of the House of Representatives, the lower house of the country's Congress, defended the funding plan.

He told local television that the commission deserved the small budget for being "useless" and defending criminals' rights.

But Congressman Edcel Lagman said the president's supporters were "virtually imposing the death penalty on a constitutionally created and mandated office".

The CHR had requested a budget of 1.72bn pesos (£25m) for 2018, but the government proposed less than half that.

On the second reading of the legislation, Congress voted to slash that to just 1,000 pesos (£25). The 2017 budget for the CHR was 749m pesos (£11m)

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Thumbnail Flickr CC andres musta