A PROFESSOR at the University of the Philippines College of Law was recognized by the Child Identity Protection, a Geneva-based international non-governmental organization.

Professor Elizabeth Aguiling-Pangalangan, director of the UP Human Rights Institute, was acknowledged for her contribution on the rights of children to have an identity.

According to UP College of Law, Aguiling-Pangalangan’s work was cited by CHIP in its 2022 signature publication titled “Preserving ‘family relations’: an essential feature of the child’s right to identity.”

“The said publication argues for the recognition of the right of the child to identity as a stand-alone right. It frames identity rights as the right to be registered at birth, have proof of one’s registration, have a nationality and name, and know one’s family relations,” the college said.

“The work further details these identity rights in the context of its creation, modification, falsification, preservation, and restoration,” it added.

Aguiling-Pangalangan’s previous professorial chair paper titled “Parents and children: When law and technology unbundle traditional identities” was also quoted by the publication’s authors.

In the paper, she pointed out the absence of Philippine laws that regulate surrogacy and  how this has led to the violation of the identity rights of children born through surrogacy.

Aguiling-Pangalangan was the only Filipino recognized by the CHIP, alongside other world-renowned child’s rights experts such as former UN Special Rapporteur Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, Rio de Janeiro Court of Justice Judge Raquel Santos Pereira Chrispino, international child’s rights consultant, Nigel Cantwell, who contributed to the drafting of the CRC, and former Hague Conference on Private International Law Secretary-General Hans Van Loon.