The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) on Wednesday appointed a new chairperson Leah Tanodra-Armamento to succeed the former chair Chito Gascon.
The new chairperson is not new to CHR since she was previously a commissioner under the present and fifth commission en banc.
She 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, wherein she chaired the legal panel of the Government of the Philippines during the 1996 Review of the Final Peace Agreement’s Implementation between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front. She was appointed as DOJ undersecretary.
The new chairperson graduated Bachelor of Laws from the Ateneo De Manila University School of Law, and a fellow of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2007.
The new chairperson will be serving the unexpired term of Gascon, who passed away after succumbing to complications caused by COVID-19 in October 2021.
The appointment of the present Commission en banc – Commissioners Karen Gomez-Dumpit, Gwendolyn Pimentel-Gana and Roberto Eugenio Cadiz—will expire on May 5.