Aurora Corazon A. Parong
Aurora Parong began her career as a medical doctor by training community health workers in marginalized villages in the Philippines where few had access to health services. This decision led her to a life mainly outside clinics and hospitals. Due to her work in far-flung villages, she was accused of providing health services to rebels for which she was held in solitary confinement for several months and arbitrarily detained for one and a half years when her country was under a dictatorship.
An alumna of the 1996 Human Rights Advocates Program, Parong became one of the early advocates for economic, social, and cultural rights in her country by contributing to the development of modules on the right to health, the right to housing, the right to water, the right to food as well as on health consequences of nuclear war. “HRAP helped me better understand the broader human rights work,” she says, “to include promotion, protection, and fulfillment of economic, social, and cultural rights by deepening my knowledge about the universality and indivisibility of various human rights.”
Parong has worked in health, human rights and justice institutions including the Medical Action Group, Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, Amnesty International and the Philippine Coalition for the International Criminal Court. Parong has acted as resource person in the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe in addition to her home country on various human rights topics including torture, reproductive and health rights, gender justice, transitional and international justice, indigenous peoples’ rights, UN and ASEAN human rights mechanisms, and rights-based approaches to development, among others. Parong is repeatedly referred to on human rights issues because of her experience, professional work, and education. When asked how the education from HRAP has assisted her, Parong says, “It was at HRAP that I got a clearer idea on the work of UN human rights bodies as well as truth and reconciliation bodies,” and “HRAP enhanced and strengthened my human rights advocacy work.”
HRAP acts as a multi-dimensional training program bringing together human rights advocates from around the world. For Parong, “The debates about various human rights concepts encouraged me to further read and study human rights principles and practice in various contexts. The sharing on the human rights situations of various countries by co-students widened my world.” Since HRAP, she has gone on to receive special certificates, some of which include a Diploma on International Humanitarian Law, Certificate on Forensic Sciences in Human Rights Investigations, and Gender Justice at the International Criminal Court.
She co-wrote and co-edited “Breaking the Silence, Seeking Justice for Victims of Violence in Intimate Relationships” for the Women Working Together to Stop Violence Against Women, “Uphold the Sanctity of Life, Enhancing Remedies for Victims of Extrajudicial Executions and Enforced Disappearances” and “Women Strategizing Justice, Women’s Resource Book on Gender Justice” published by the Philippine Coalition for the International Criminal Court, among others.
After receiving special recognition in 2005 from Task Force Detainees of the Philippines for her service as executive director for nine years, Parong moved on to serve as director of Amnesty International Philippines ensuring that strategic plans, priorities, and projects create positive changes in the lives of people in various parts of the world. She has led in the campaigns for health and human rights laws and policies not only in the Philippines but for other countries.
Her work with Amnesty International Philippines was cut short by her appointment in 2014 by the Philippine President as one of the nine (9) members of the Human Rights Victims' Claims Board (HRVCB). The HRVCB was a quasi-judicial body tasked to evaluate claims and provide recognition and reparation to victims of human rights violations during martial law under the Marcos regime in the Philippines. They evaluated 75, 749 claims then recognized and provided monetary reparations to at least 11, 103 victims. She said that, “The HRVCB played a key role in transitional justice within the Philippines, but can have an impact on other countries especially in Asia facing transitional justice issues in the future.” She led the Working Group on Non-monetary reparations which are additional services to victims of serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian laws. Currently, she assists in training teachers and professors of history to ensure the integration of the valuable lessons learned by the Filipino people in the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship and helps collect stories and materials that will help shape a future Freedom Memorial Museum and library in honor of those who suffered and fought against the dictatorship in the Philippines.
Parong was one of the leaders in the campaign for the ratification by the Philippines of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court but the Philippines withdrew membership at the international court after being a State Party for eight years. The Philippine coalition, which she co-chairs, assists families of victims of killings in the Philippine government’s “war on drugs” in their efforts to seek justice at the court of last resort prior to the country’s withdrawal from the court.
Parong has received recognition for her work, with a Distinguished Physician Award given by the Medical Association for the Prevention of War- Australia and Outstanding in Community Service and Public Health Award for 2016 from the University of the Philippines Medical Alumni Society, among others.
- Article composed by Andrew Richardson, Program Assistant, June 2010; Updated by Chiora Taktakishvili, Fulbright Exchange Visitor, July 2019