(Eagle News) — The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) has a new chair, Leah Tanodra-Armamento, who succeeds the late chair Jose Luis Martin ‘Chito’ Gascon who died last October due to Covid-19 complications.
This was announced by the CHR on its website on Wednesday, February 16, the same day that Tanodra-Armamento’s appointment paper was released.
“The new CHR Chair is not new to the Commission. Chair Tanodra-Armamento was previously a Commissioner under the present and Fifth Commission en banc,” the CHR said.
She will be serving the unexpired term of the previous CHR Chair. Gascon succumbed to complications caused by Covid-19 in October 2021.
Before working for the CHR, Chair Tanodra-Armamento worked for five years with the Office of the Solicitor General as an Associate Solicitor, where she assisted the solicitors in habeas corpus cases. She transferred to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and moved her way up from State Prosecutor to Senior State Prosecutor from 1991 to 2003. In 2003, she was appointed as the DOJ Assistant Chief State Prosecutor, where she chaired the legal panel of the Government of the Philippines (GPH) during the 1996 Review of the Final Peace Agreement’s Implementation between the Philippine government and the Moro National Liberation Front (MILF). Thereafter, she was appointed as DOJ Undersecretary.
The new CHR chair Tanodra-Armamento graduated with a Bachelor of Laws degree from the Ateneo De Manila University School of Law. She was also a fellow of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2007.
(Eagle News Service)