His Excellency
Benigno Simeon C. Aquino
President of the Republic of the Philippines
Malacañang Palace JP Laurel St.,
San Miguel Manila NCR 1005, Philippines
Fax: +63 2 7361346
March 28, 2013
Your Excellency:
FIAN International is an international human rights organization – in consultative status with the
Economic and Social Council of the United Nations – working for the implementation of the human right to
adequate food.
FIAN International welcomes the news about the recent release of the final master list of farm
worker beneficiaries in Hacienda Luisita at the end of February by the Department of Agrarian Reform
(DAR). The identification of the beneficiaries has been a long overdue process, accompanied by several
delays and hurdles in obtaining the farm workers’ right to land and thus their right to adequate food.
Finalization of the master list is an important step towards finally implementing the Comprehensive
Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (CARP-ER) in Hacienda Luisita and therefore towards
realizing the right to food of 6,212 farm workers, who petitioned for the revocation of the Stock
Distribution Option (SDO) on the hacienda in 2003.
As FIAN International has already pointed out in two previous letters to the Supreme Court (on
August 3, 2011 and on October 6, 2010), the SDO increased poverty on the hacienda as it failed to address
joblessness and economic insecurity among the farm workers, who suffered from a reduction of wages due
to land use conversions which diminished the size of the agricultural land. They received a weekly takehome pay of merely P 9.50. Moreover, many farm workers also faced retrenchments. The SDO as such
could not replace the actual land distribution. Worse still, the Hacienda massacre in 2004 resulted in the
paralysis of the employer-employee relationship within the sugar estate and drove some farm workers to
occupy and cultivate plots within the hacienda in 2005. They hoped to develop a new source of livelihood
through farming. Most of them had no experience with self-managed farms in their lives. This, however,
was complicated by the government’s refusal to provide them with any support for inputs, technology or
credit. Many farm workers thus became indebted to usurious lenders. Successive natural disasters (drought
in 2007 and typhoons in 2008) further increased their indebtedness to lenders and input providers. While
some farm workers leased occupied lands to outsiders who re-invested in sugarcane, others managed to
sustain their occupation and developed their own patches of rice, corn, tomato and vegetable plots.
However, they lacked access to the market and continued to fall prey to informal lenders who charged
usurious rates and merchants who bought their produce at low prices.
For the Hacienda Luisita farmers, access to land is crucial to feed themselves and their families
adequately. In this regard, the Philippines, as a state party to the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), in which the human right to food is enshrined in Article 11, Paragraphs 1
and 2 of the Covenant, has the obligation to fulfill the right to adequate food of the farm workers in
Hacienda Luisita by implementing the CARPER and redistributing the land immediately to the farmers. It
has been more than two decades since the Hacienda was deemed covered under CARP. Therefore, no
further delays can be accepted and all efforts should be made to meet the deadline of land redistribution
by June 2013 set by the DAR. The CARPER – agrarian reform – is central to the fulfillment by the Filipino
state’s obligation to ensure the right to food of the Hacienda Luisita farmers. Furthermore, agrarian reform,
from a human rights perspective, requires more than just the distribution of land. Farmers need a set of
conditions so they can make use of the land given and become self-reliant. Therefore, the DAR should
support the farmers by providing the needed services, such as the necessary credit, irrigation facilities,
marketing, and training, which are all part of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (Section 2
“Declaration of Principles and Policies” and Chapter IX “Support Services”) but have not been provided to
date. In order to fulfill the human right to food of the Hacienda Luisita farm workers and their families,
government action must go beyond mere land redistribution, in considering that the process entails a
transition phase which should prepare the farm workers to undertake the challenges of land ownership and
to productively develop their land through small farm holdings. Without providing financial and technical
support to the farmers, agrarian reform in Hacienda Luisita is bound to fail, and the right to food of the
farm workers can never be fulfilled. As such, support during this transitional phase and even beyond the
land redistribution phase, is essential for the farmers to cultivate their land in a sustainable manner and to
provide their families with adequate food and income, ultimately guaranteeing their human right to food
now and in future.
As such, we would there like to ask you, Your Excellency, to order the distribution of the land titles
by June 2013 at the latest – the DAR’s self-imposed deadline. Furthermore, we would like to ask you to
urge the DAR to immediately provide all necessary support services to the farmer beneficiaries throughout
the transition and post-distribution phase.
Sincerely,
Flavio Valente
FIAN International
Secretary General
CC: Gil de los Reyes (Secretary of Agrarian Reform)