Council.78 COHRE also took issue with the inclusion in the definition of professional squatters of those families who sell, lease or transfer their beneficial interest in a government resettlement site. It was remarked that ‘[t]he category evidently includes many cases of poor families who left distant resettlement sites because of the lack of economic opportunities and basic services’. It is indeed worrying that families in circumstances of poverty are penalised by the law for returning to the city to pursue economic opportunities. More concerning is section 2 of the IRRs that expose ‘[n]ew squatter families whose structures were built after the effectivity of RA 7279’ to summary eviction. This suggests that any settlement or dwelling constructed after the passage of the UDHA in 1992 will not be entitled to the human rights protections of the Act. Not only does this exclude such persons from the safeguards against eviction established by section 28, but it also precludes them from availing of any government subsidised housing programmes. It should be made clear that such a blanket prohibition of persons from access to government supported housing programmes violates a number of international human rights standards mentioned above. A policy that limits an entire class of persons from access to government supported housing, without reference to their means of providing housing for themselves, will result in homelessness and render such persons vulnerable to other human rights abuses, in contravention of standard 3.12. Standard 3.4 clarifies that evictions can under no circumstances be used as a punitive measure. The use of summary evictions as a means of dealing with professional squatters, effectively denying this group access to a whole host of procedural rights to which they would otherwise be entitled, is entirely punitive in nature. This abrogation of rights is clarified by the Philippine Supreme Court in Republic of the Philippines v. Mijares: ‘The mere identification of persons or groups as professional squatters or squatting syndicates is sufficient authority for the local government unit concerned to summarily evict them and to demolish their dwellings or structures as well as to disqualify them from availing the benefits of Rep. Act No. 7279.’79 There is no recourse specified in section 27 or its IRRs to any appellate body or mechanism to challenge the summary eviction. Summary eviction inadvertently occurs subsequent to an equally summary determination of an individual or group as professional squatters. As professional squatters are not entitled to the protections of section 28, they are also not entitled to the complaints mechanisms contemplated within the IRRs to section 28. As noted with concern by the CESCR, the criminal law should not be used in the first instance as a means of dealing with problems caused by a shortage of adequate housing. Although the criminalisation of ‘squatting’ per se has been repealed through the enactment of Republic Act 8368, ‘professional squatting’ remains punishable by pecuniary penalties and significant periods of incarceration. A recent initiative developed by the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating 78 Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, Submission to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to Assist in the Preparation of Documents for the First Cycle of the Universal Periodic Review, 2007, p. 5. 79 G.R. Nos. 170615-16. 44  Human Rights in the Rubble