November 16, Manila – Members of a new Board of Trustees were elected at the second General Assembly (GA) of the IBON International Foundation. The GA was held at Balay Kalinaw International Centre, University of the Philippines-Diliman.
New members of the Board of Trustees include Sarojeni Rengam (Pesticide Action Network-Asia Pacific), Amirah Ali Lidasan (Moro-Christian Peoples Alliance) and Sylvia Mallari (Undersecretary at the Philippines’ Department of Agrarian Reform). Other members of the incumbent Board of Trustees were also re-elected by the GA, such as Rev. Malcolm Damon (Economic Justice Network), Roselynn Musa (Agenda for Change), Demba Dembele (Association for Research and Cooperation in Support of Endogenous Development), Atty. Edwin dela Cruz (National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers), Beverly Longid (International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-determination and Liberation) and Prof. Roland Simbulan (Center for Peoples Empowerment and Governance).
Five (5) of the eight (8) elected members of the BOT are women. The BOT members come from the Philippines, Malaysia, South Africa, Kenya and Senegal. They also have diverse backgrounds: the academe; legal practice; government service; civil society organisations working on farmers’ rights, feminism, economic justice; and social movements advocating for the rights of indigenous peoples.
Members of the BOT from 2014 to 2017 also included former Philippine Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano, Chennaiah Poguri (Andhra Pradesh Vyavasaya Vruthidarula Union) and Sr. Emelina Villegas (Centre for Trade Union and Human Rights). The first GA of IBON International Foundation was held in 2014.
During the 2017 GA, Antonio Tujan Jr., IBON International Director, also reported on the progress of the organisation in committing to its 2016-2020 strategic plan of building constituencies for people-powered and rights-based democracy. At the end of the GA, an online bookshop under the IBON Institute for International Development (I3D) was also launched (i3d-bookshop.com).###
