I. Arrival and Registration | 8:56 AM – 9:40 AM At 8:56 in the morning, participants started to arrive at the venue. The CHR XI team facilitated the registration of the participants. While waiting for the other participants to arrive, the morning snacks was served. At 9:40 in the morning a total of 12 participants, coming from different key offices of Sta. Maria LGU, were registered for the activity. II. Preliminaries | Opening Ceremony | 9:41 AM – 9:50 AM At 9:45 AM, the activity was formally opened with an invocation. A multimedia presentation of the song Dakilang Maylikha by Gary Granada served as the morning prayer. This was then followed by the singing of the Philippine National Anthem. Acting as the main facilitator of the activity, Mr. Niel Peter Arendain led the introduction of the participants. He asked the participants to stand up and be recognized as he called their names in the plenary. Shortly after this, Mr. Arendain thanked all the participants for responding to CHR’s invitation. III. Rationale of the Activity | 9:51 AM – 9:53 AM Mr. Niel Peter Arendain gave a brief background of the activity. He explained that the regional mapping of legal referral mechanisms on gender-based violence will ease out the process of looking into the experiences of participants in handling or managing cases related to gender-based violence. Particularly, the process will look into how these cases are reported to appropriate government offices or authorities in the barangay and in the municipality. Given so, Mr. Arendain encouraged everyone’s participation in the focus group discussion. IV. Commission on Human Rights Mandate | 9:54 AM – 10:13 AM The Commission on Human Rights Mandate was presented by Atty. Mary Joy Bravo. She is one of the Chief Investigators of CHR Region XI. Below are the salient points of her discussion: • Atty. Mary Joy Bravo opened her presentation on CHR Mandate by providing a brief background of CHR. She explained that the Commission on Human Rights is an independent national human rights institution that was created under the 1987 Constitution. She added, that the establishment of CHR was a response to the atrocities that happened during the Martial Law under the Marcos Regime. • The CHR mandate is to conduct investigations on Human Rights Violations (HRV) committed against marginalized and vulnerable sectors of the society involving civil and political rights. CHR’s basis of investigation are the existing laws that were promulgated by the state to protect the basic human rights of the citizens. Thus, Human Rights and the law go hand-in-hand 6