PHILIPPINES

AHRC’s annual Summer Internship Program brings ‘impactful’ community immersion experience to interns

A total of 11 participants from the Ateneo Law School, Mc Gill University, and Ateneo Human Rights Center (AHRC) attended this year’s AHRC Summer Internship Program (SIP) held on June 20-30, 2024 in Quezon City and in various Agta communities in Sta. Ana, Cagayan Province. 

The interns underwent the mandatory Basic Orientation Seminar (BOS) from June 20-23, 2024 at Betania Retreat House in Quezon City. The BOS was put in place to equip interns with foundational knowledge and skills on various areas of human rights including indigenous peoples rights prior to their deployment to their immersion communities. It is also during the BOS where interns are provided with some formation activities that allow them to be holistically prepared to immerse in communities.

Among the topics discussed during the four-day BOS were Human Rights and the National Situation, Alternative Lawyering, Women and Gender Rights, Children’s Rights, ASEAN and International Human Rights Mechanisms, Popular Education and Paralegal Training Persons Deprived of Liberty, Client Interview Workshop, and Indigenous Peoples Rights

After undergoing tedious workshops and seminars on various human rights topics, the interns traveled fourteen long hours from Quezon City to their immersion sites in Sta. Ana Cagayan. They were deployed in three different Agta communities in Sta. Ana, including two (2) mountains and one (1) island communities. They were welcomed by their foster families where they lived for seven (7) days (June 24-30). 

The immersion opportunity is a three-decade tradition of the internship program of AHRC which was intended to give law interns the chance to understand the complexities of the problems that communities in the grassroots experience. With the immersion, AHRC hopes to develop among its interns the passion to learn the law, serve the people, and pursue alternative lawyering in the future.

Atty. Katrina Isabela Blanco, AHRC Program Officer and one of the supervising lawyers who led the SIP this year shared that the internship program of the Ateneo Human Rights Center is more than just a training ground for young law students aspiring to be lawyers for the underrepresented communities. As an AHRC alumni herself, Atty. Blanco completely knew how the internship formation of AHRC was designed.

“The Internship Program is more than just a training ground. It is designed where values are formed and futures are shaped, hopefully, to inspire future advocates and lawyers-for-communities that in turn will walk and assist others,” Atty. Blanco said.

 

She also added that part of the program process is to push interns to bring their knowledge of the law to where injustices are prevalent and where the rule of law is needed the most.

True enough, the SIP experience served as an inspiration to the interns this year in terms of advocating for human rights promotion. For Jennifer Rodriguez, a sophomore student at the Ateneo Law School and AHRC SIP 2024 intern, the internship opportunity with AHRC was an eye-opener as it led her to realizations she deems significant to her journey as a law student. 

“My AHRC SIP (summer internship program) experience was truly an eye-opening experience, for this is where I get to see the gaps in the law, in its execution, and how it truly works on the ground. Hopefully, with this eye-opening experience comes hope, that eventually, upon seeing its gaps, we can have the opportunity to work on it and thus, fill it with one that is sensitive to the conditions of the people,” she stressed. 

Jennifer was inspired to sign up for the AHRC internship program because she particularly shares the same vision with AHRC and that is to have a just and humane society.

Saul Yuris Adato, also a sophomore at the ALS and AHRC SIP 2024 intern, considered his internship experience in AHRC a life-changing encounter. “It’s a program where you go through a lot of things and you come out a different person. From the training during the Basic Orientation Seminar (BOS), the immersion, and the internship–it gives you a glimpse of the life of a human rights activist and that’s what I want to pursue,” said he

As the interns immerse themselves in their respective communities, each day seems to reveal certain realities about the people in the area–their living conditions, socioeconomic and political challenges, and even legal struggles. This, along with other narratives from the people that depict the complexities of their societal struggles, allow interns to view on the ground situations beyond legal perspective. And hopefully, this inspires them to use this experience to pursue alternative lawyering in the future. 

Some of the issues their foster community encounters are lack of access to necessities and services, displacement, discrimination, and land-grabbing that results in grave threats and intimidation.

After their seven-day immersion, interns did not only see the problems of their respective foster communities. They also brought with them their realizations and reflections, including raw ideas on how they can contribute using the law in addressing the issues of the communities. To help them process and debrief from their experience, a post-immersion evaluation and planning was conducted on August 1-3, 2024 in Antipolo City. 

The Evaluation and Planning is a component of the internship program that takes place after the immersion. The three-day evaluation and planning allows interns to process their immersion experience, identify legal issues in their respective communities, and lay out potential plans and strategies to address them moving forward. This is also where the interns are expected to elect batch officers and identify their official batch name anchored on their most memorable immersion experience.

For Jennifer and Saul, there are several things they are looking forward to doing when they become lawyers someday. They intend to contribute in the future by being lawyers for the marginalized that address the issues of those underrepresented, especially the indigenous peoples.

“As a future lawyer, I want to be able to help in the future in refining the process of Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) so that we can give the IPs their rightful lands in a speedy and inexpensive manner, and thus, hopefully, we can create a process that will no longer be seen as a means to more injustice to the indigenous communities,” Jennifer expressed.

Saul, on the other hand, intends to contribute in eliminating discrimination against indigenous peoples when he becomes a lawyer in the future.

“I intend to hopefully help create a space for Indigenous Communities where they can just be themselves and feel included and not excluded in our society. They, too, have rights,” he shared.

On the evening of August 3, the SIP 2024 interns elected their batch officers. Jennifer emerged as the Batch Head after being voted by her fellow interns. The interns also decided to officially call their batch Okan–an Agta term which means to join. It is as if Batch Okan is inviting everyone, including AHRC alumni, resident interns, and future interns to join them as they advocate for human rights and access to justice for all. 

The Ateneo Human Rights Center’s Internship Program also proudly celebrates its 37th anniversary of internship formation this year. As AHRC continues to take pride in producing law interns who have hearts for serving others, the organization is also eternally grateful to institutional partners that have helped sustain the program over the years—the Ateneo Law School and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom Philippines. 

This article is written by RJ Sangcap, the Communications Officer for the Ateneo Human Rights Center.