Geneva-based NGO taps UP IHR Director Professor Elizabeth Aguiling-Pangalangan as Expert

UP IHR Director Professor Elizabeth Aguiling-Pangalangan’s contribution on the rights of children to have an identity earned  recognition from Child Identity Protection (CHIP), a Geneva-based International Non-Governmental Organization (INGO). Professor Aguiling-Pangalangan’s work was cited by CHIP in its 2022 signature publication entitled “Preserving ‘family relations’: an essential feature of the child’s right to identity”.

The said publication argues for the recognition of the right of the child to identity as a stand-alone right. It frames identity rights as the right to be registered at birth, have proof of one’s registration, have a nationality and name, and know one’s family relations. The work further details these identity rights in the context of its creation, modification, falsification, preservation, and restoration. Professor Aguiling-Pangalangan’s previous professorial chair paper entitled “Parents and children: When law and technology unbundle traditional identities” was likewise quoted by the publication’s authors. In the paper, Professor Aguiling-Pangalangan  pointed out the absence of Philippine laws that regulate surrogacy and  how this has led to the violation of the identity rights of children born through surrogacy.

Professor Aguiling-Pangalangan is the only Filipino recognized by the CHIP, alongside other world-renowned child’s rights experts such as former UN Special Rapporteur Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, Rio de Janeiro Court of Justice Judge Raquel Santos Pereira Chrispino, international child’s rights consultant, Nigel Cantwell, who contributed to the drafting of the CRC and former Hague Conference on Private International Law Secretary-General Hans Van Loon.

The publication was launched by the CHIP on 29 June 2022 and its full copy may be accessed through this link https://child-identity.org/images/files/CHIP-Preserving-Family-Relations-EN.pdf