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Human Rights Commissioner on the successful work done by Detlef Mehlis in the Philippines
Friday, 8 April 2011 <!-- @page { size: 21cm 29.7cm; margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } -->
To mark the close of the successful European-Philippine Justice Support Programme (EP JUST), Markus Löning, the Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Aid at the Federal Foreign Office, issued the following statement today (8 April):
“The European-Philippine Justice Support Programme (EP-JUST) has made an important contribution towards strengthening the rule of law in the Philippines. Detlef Mehlis played a key role in this process. I would like to sincerely thank him and his team for that.
Recently the Philippines has undertaken considerable efforts to improve its human rights situation. The German Government supports this. We have therefore agreed with the Government in Manila to continue financing some parts of the programme. Moreover, we are calling at European level for a follow-up programme.”
Detlef Mehlis is a senior public prosecutor from Berlin and the former UN Special Investigator on the tribunal investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Since January 2010 he has headed the European-Philippine Justice Support Programme (EP-JUST) on behalf of the EU Commission.
EP-JUST ended on 7 April 2011. The programme focused on human rights. The aim was to enhance the effectiveness of the Philippine law enforcement agencies, in particular in the fight against extra-judicial killings. To this end, EP-JUST developed and carried out, among other things, training measures for the police, public prosecutors and the judiciary.
Now that EP-JUST has ended, successful programme components are to be included in a new EU programme. The follow-up programme is to be launched in 2012.
