SESSION 1 CHR MANDATES AND WORKS ON PROTECTING AND PROMOTING IP RIGHTS. RATIONALE AND INITIAL IDEAS ON THE NATURE & PROCESS OF AN IP RIGHTS OBSERVATORY & NATIONAL INQUIRY ON IP RIGHTS. Commissioner Gwendolyn Ll. Pimentel-Gana Magandang umaga po sa inyong lahat! Ako po ay nagagalak sa ngalan po ng Komisyon at sa aking mga kasamahan, sa ating kasamang Komisyoner na nandito po ngayon. Salamat po at binigyan n'yo ng panahon ang aming paanyaya. Importante po ang inyong partisipasyon dito sa ating IP Conference on the IP Right to Development. This year is the celebration of the enactment of the IPRA Law. It is in its 20th year. This is the right time what the law has actually done for our IPs. We really need your input in protecting, promoting and uplifting the rights of the IPs. We always respect the right to self-determination and self-governance of the IPs. This can be shown in the Rights to Development. If you have the right governance, therefore you have the right to determine what course of development you are taking. In the Commission on Human Rights we would like to come up with two things: (1) we intend or pursue a Public Inquiry on the IP Rights, mainly in land rights at the same time the enjoyment of other rights that are vested in them by the IP Law (2) we would like to create an IP Observatory within the Commission on Human Rights. What is this? We will use the various IP tools that will be developed in the observatory to track the rights and implementation of all the laws that are for IPs. There will be a housed-monitoring team that will monitor the enjoyment of the IPs’ rights. We will have the data bank wherein any information on IPs will be stored, with the cooperation of the NCIP. We already started our relationship with them, we made a lot of consultations with them, and we will move forward in Commissioner Gwendolyn Ll. Pimentel-Gana to establish this observatory. We need your input, how this observatory should be structured? How this observatory should run? How this observatory should be stored? We also need 5