A 12-hour running gunfight should leave plenty of evidence: spent casings, trampled paths, bloodstains, bullet holes in trees or structures. These should have been documented by now. What are they hiding in Toboso?

‘Negros 19’ Deaths Need to Be Investigated. But Who Is Credible Enough to Do it?

After 19 were killed in Negros Occidental, everyone calls for an investigation. History shows why that may not be enough.

Why the Laws of War Matter in Places Like Negros — and Why They Are Routinely Ignored

CONTEXT CHECK: Both sides in the Philippines’ communist insurgency have formally committed to follow the rules of war. In Negros Occidental and elsewhere, they have repeatedly broken them.

Negros Burns, Again: Death of 19 in Army Raid Raises Hard, Familiar Questions

Nineteen people are dead and hundreds displaced after a military operation in Negros Occidental. The military called it a decisive victory against the communists. Human rights groups are demanding answers.

Another ‘Nanlaban’ Claim: Boy, Dad, Cousin Killed in Police Raid for Militant

A joint military-police operation targeting a suspected militant left three members of a Zamboanga City family dead. The man they were looking for was not among them.

Duterte’s Lawyer Is Right About the ICC Seeking Relevance. He’s Just Wrong About Why.

NEWS ANALYSIS: The ICC handed drug war families something no Philippine court ever did: a real shot at accountability. President Marcos has no excuse not to meet it.

Stark Warning from Amnesty on the State of Human Rights

Amnesty International paints a mixed picture of the Philippines, where rights abuses persist

This Group Helped Put Duterte’s Words on Trial at the ICC

Most Filipinos have never heard of No Peace Without Justice. But for nearly a decade, this Rome-based advocacy group quietly helped build one of the most consequential human rights cases in Southeast Asian history: the International Criminal Court prosecution of a sitting head of state for crimes against humanity.

If The Hague Can’t Help, Can Manila?

A ruling against the ICC’s jurisdiction on the Duterte case would leave thousands of Filipino families with few good options — and a government that has shown little appetite to be the answer.

What RFK Award to Filipino Lawyers Group Means for Human Rights in the Philippines and Beyond

The 43rd RFK Human Rights Award goes to the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, whose members have faced killings, red-tagging, and state harassment for defending the poor and the oppressed. NUPL, like other legal aid groups before it, was born out of the Philippines’ long struggle for justice and accountability.

New Advocacy Hub Launched to Shield Human Rights Defenders

Kalasag taps a growing civil society coalition to protect activists, journalists, lawyers, and community leaders at risk

Women journalists in the Philippines are among the most targeted in the world, and the attacks online are increasingly designed to follow them into real life. But they are fighting back.

Medicine Prices in the Philippines Are Crazy High; Systemic Regulatory Failures Enable Runaway Greed by Distributors, Drugstores

CONTEXT CHECK: Layers of markups and taxes that push prices as high as 355%, a gutted generics law, kickbacks to doctors, and decades of regulatory failure have made the Philippines one of the most expensive pharmaceutical markets in Asia.

New Advocacy Hub Launched to Shield Human Rights Defenders

Kalasag taps a growing civil society coalition to protect activists, journalists, lawyers, and community leaders at risk

How Ayala Took Land Away from Poor Iloilo Fisherfolk to Build a High-End Resort

New documentary shows how Ayala Land, colluding with the administration of the late president Noynoy Aquino, grabbed 335 hectares of agrarian reform land in Sicogon, Iloilo, displacing hundreds of small fisherfolk. Many of the affected villagers – some of whom have died of old age – are still waiting for their due.

A landmark summit in 2024 asked the government to treat illegal drugs not as a crime problem but as a public health problem. The body count since then suggests it isn’t listening.

Damning CHR Report Exposes Torture, Mistreatment, Neglect of Children in Government Facilities

A report by the Commission on Human Rights accuses the Philippine government of violating laws meant to protect children. It documents a pattern of abuse against children in conflict with the law that begins at arrest, continues inside government facilities such as Bahay Pag-asa, and is sustained by a justice system too broken and too slow to protect them.

Police Nab Thousands in Urban Poor Sweep; Lawyers, Child Rights Groups Call Arrests Illegal, Anti-Poor

Nearly 25,000 people were apprehended in two days. The police say it’s about discipline. Critics say the numbers reveal exactly what’s wrong with the operation.

Remulla’s ‘Safer Cities’ Crackdown: Arrested Children Could End Up in Hell-Holes Like Bahay Pagasa

Building on previous documentation by human rights groups, the Commission on Human Rights issues a report this week that says the facilities waiting for these children are still squalid and abusive.

From ‘Warfare’ to Welfare: Project Aims to Change the Way Filipinos View and Talk About Drug Use

In a first, the Philippines launches community-led harm reduction modules that recognize the human rights of drug users and impart empathy rather than fear.

Remulla’s Curfew Crackdown on Minors Runs Into a Wall of Law

Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla says young people loitering after 10 p.m. will be arrested. Well-meaning, perhaps, but legally infirm. A child caught out past curfew is supposed to be taken home, not taken into custody. The law treats it as a welfare issue, not a criminal one.

An 11-year-old girl’s letter to President Marcos jr. went viral. Behind it is a small shelter in Camarines Sur — and a fight against an official the children say has made their lives impossible.

Social Media Platforms Are Putting Human Rights Defenders at Risk: UN Expert

A new report by a UN Special Rapporteur finds that Meta/Facebook, X, TikTok, YouTube and other platforms activists rely on to expose abuse are increasingly being used to silence them — and the tech companies responsible appear to be paying less and less attention.

Endless Workers’ Rights Violations: 105 Trade Unionists Killed; Thousands More Arrested, Harassed, Red-Tagged, Displaced

A preliminary report by Workers’ Rights Watch paints a grim picture of the state of labor rights in the Philippines. Accountability is practically zero while much-vaunted mechanisms to stop or mitigate the violations, like the EU’s GSP+, have proven ineffective.

Most Filipinos Can’t Afford Housing Not Just Because Homes Are Expensive. It’s Also Because They Don’t Earn Enough.

CONTEXT CHECK: Filipinos are struggling with housing, yes. But what the data actually shows is that the Philippines has an inequality problem — deep, structural, and decades in the making — and housing is simply where people feel it most acutely.

Philippines Is Ground Zero for Disinformation. Facebook’s Fix Will Make it Worse.

Meta/Facebook scrapped its fact-checkers. Now its own watchdog says the replacement – Community Notes – could backfire in places like the Philippines where disinformation is rampant. And that’s because the company is “cosplaying accountability.”

Court Upholds Cumpio, Domequil Terror-Financing Conviction

A TACLOBAN court on Friday affirmed the terrorism financing conviction of community journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio and lay worker Marielle Domequil, and denied their bid to be released on bail. The ruling paves the way for the two women to be transferred to a women’s prison in Metro Manila after more than six years behind bars.

Appeals Court Overturns Rebellion Conviction of Child Rights Advocate

Ma. Salome Ujano’s acquittal is the latest blow to a security framework critics say is built on thin evidence

8 Things You Need to Know About the Philippines’ Removal from the UN Child Rights Watchlist. And Why the Celebration Was Premature.

CONTEXT CHECK: The Commission on Human Right endorsed and celebrated the Philippines’ removal from the UN list of countries with grave violations against children in armed conflict. Here are reasons why that’s a problem.

CHILDREN

Hooked: What the U.S. Verdict Against Meta and YouTube Means for the Philippines

A landmark U.S. verdict says Meta and YouTube knew their platforms posed addiction risks to children and said nothing. The Philippines — the world’s most Facebook-saturated and top YouTube-using country — has no equivalent protection. It should.

DRUG WAR

Drug War: How the World Failed the Philippines

OPINION: Aside from the belated case at the International Criminal Court, institutions of international accountability have been missing in action. The UN came up short. The EU faltered. The ASEAN didn’t even bother.

ECONOMIC RIGHT / POVERTY

The Philippines Failed Filipinos Long Before This Energy Crisis Did. Is It Time for OPSF 2.0?

NEWS ANALYSIS: Decades of policy failure — from the OPSF to oil deregulation — have left ordinary Filipinos with no real shelter from the worst fuel shock in the country’s history.

Marcos Taps Coal to Deal with Energy Crisis. Sound Move? Or Just a Habit That’s Hard to Break?

IN CONTEXT: President Marcos has said he wants the Philippines to move away from coal. But by 2030, the country’s coal demand is estimated to rise by at least 15 percent. That is not moving away – that is walking deeper into the coal trap the Philippines created for itself.

CIVIC SPACE

Philippines Lands on Global Rights Watchlist Amid Crackdown on Activists

The Philippines already carries a “Repressed” rating from the CIVICUS monitor, the second worst designation a country can receive.

LGBT AND SOGIE

Not Just Showbiz: Alvin Aragon’s Anti-LGBT Campaign Echoes a Script to Block LGBTQ Rights. It’s Also Illegal.

ANALYSIS AND A CALL TO ACTION: Alvin Aragon’s statements against LGBTQ people and parents are being dismissed as celebrity drama. They shouldn’t be. His language tracks — almost word for word — the talking points that have blocked a landmark anti-discrimination law in Congress for 25 years. And the law he may be breaking has not been enforced against him.

LABOR RIGHTS

Crackdown in Lucio Tan’s Factory Highlights Abuse of Workers in ‘Special Economic Zones’

Water cannon incident is just the latest in a string of abuses in Laguna Technopark ecozone. Advocates are urging the European Union to enforce GSP+ human rights-tariff scheme, saying this and previous violations fall within its purview.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS

Islamic Jurists in Muslim Mindanao Push for Rights of Women and Children, One Fatwa at a Time. Congress, Meanwhile, Sits on Its Hands on Rape Law.

NEWS ANALYSIS: The latest fatwa by the Bangsamoro Darul-Ifta’ is a landmark edict banning forced marriage of rape survivors. Can that and other fatwas accumulate enough religious and social weight to change what no law from Manila has managed to change?

Philippines’ Terrorism-Financing Machine Is Breaking Down in Court. But the Damage Keeps Spreading.

NEWS ANALYSIS: A critical ruling due on Monday, March 23, could test whether Philippine courts will keep sustaining charges that have already been thrown out in case after case — and force a reckoning with a national security apparatus that has treated due process as an obstacle rather than a right.

EXTRAJUDICIAL AND SUMMARY EXECUTIONS / IMPUNITY

The Nameless Corpses of Sirang Lupa

ESSAY: Dead bodies, damaged lands, and the cost of getting used to everyday impunity

RIGHTS OF OLDER PEOPLE

Aging Fast, Preparing Slow: The Philippines Is Failing Its Elderly

A landmark study exposes what many Filipinos already know: growing old here means depending on family, making do with little, and hoping the system catches you before it’s too late. And no, a free birthday cake or a movie pass won’t fix the problem.

PRESS FREEDOM / CHILDREN

The Shield That Became a Weapon: Press Freedom Law Is Being Used to Suppress Campus Journalists

IN CONTEXT: The Campus Journalism Act of 1991 was meant to uphold freedom of the press and to protect student journalists. Three decades later, it keeps getting used against them. And a bill seeking to replace it is languishing in Congress.

INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE / DISINFORMATION

‘Tiktok Did It!’: The Lazy Explanation for Why Filipino Gen Z Is Losing Faith in the ICC

OPINION: Blaming social media for the drop in support for the ICC prosecution of former president Rodrigo Duterte is a convenient story. It’s also a little embarrassing

.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

Philippine Media Blows Chance to Contextualize, Deepen Aeta Graduate’s Story

Rolan Popatco Jr., the first Aeta to become a medical technologist, deserves every word of praise he gets. The Philippine press deserves a kick in the shin for ignoring the larger significance of his story

LABOR

Work Without Fear: Proposed Law Seeks to End Workplace Violence, Abuse

Two out of 10 workers in the Philippines experience violence and harassment in the workplace. Makabayan bloc’s bill aims to provide protection, which extends to workers in the informal sector.

The Commission on Human Rights issues its most urgent call yet for full reparations to Filipina survivors of Japanese wartime sexual slavery, warning that time is running out. The continued denial of reparations and justice is a violation of international law.

Mothers in Prison: Why Is the Philippines Detaining Pregnant Women in Congested, Poorly Run Jails?

A new policy brief from the University of the Philippines argues that jailing pregnant women puts mothers and babies at serious risk — and that the country already has the legal tools to do better. The question is why are those tools unused?

Teen Birth Rates Continue to Rise While Lawmakers Dawdle on Sex Ed Bill

A women’s health advocate is calling on the Philippine Congress to pass an adolescent pregnancy prevention law, saying punitive measures have fallen short as births among unmarried teens continue to climb.

IN CONTEXT: Migrant groups are raising alarm about the kafala system in the Middle East, which ties Filipino workers to their employers who often keep the OFWs’ passports. This prevents thousands from going home as bombs fall around them. Manila knows the problem exists but has not done anything specific to address it.

Informal Workers Reel from Impact of Soaring Oil Prices

In cities like Cagayan de Oro, poor Filipinos contend with the impact of the conflict in the Middle East and government measures that, while important, are nearly not enough to mitigate their hardship.

Topacio Disbarment Complaint a Warning to Other Lawyers: You Will Pay for Sexist Remarks

The complaint against lawyer Ferdinand Topacio, filed by fellow lawyer Jesus Falcis, cites Topacio’s lewd remarks as violations of Philippine laws. It also violates certain international laws and treaties on women the Philippines has signed.

The Problem with the Autism Care Bill

The proposed law, which the Philippine Senate passed recently, is long overdue. But it needs tweaking.

Although illegal, hundreds of thousands of women in the Philippines undergo induced and unsafe abortion each year. For many of them, initiatives like Women on Web are a lifeline. But Internet providers in the Philippines have blocked access to its website, thus depriving women of medically accurate, nonjudgmental information and care.

‘Mining Hell Week’: Communities Protest Destructive Mining, Urge DENR to Cancel Permits

Five groups demand the cancellation of permits for mining companies found to have damaged the environment as reports warn of a widening human rights crisis across the Philippines due to mining.

Lokalpedia founder John Sherwin Felix challenges a cyberlibel case filed against him over his critique of a government-funded book on regional cuisine. The case, his supporters argue, violates freedom of expression.

Arrested, Charged, Red-Tagged: Philippines Tightens Grip on Dissent

A new CIVICUS report documents a sweeping pattern of criminalization, torture, fabricated charges, and red-tagging against peaceful protesters, human rights defenders, journalists, and land rights activists across the Philippines.

Arrest of DZRH Reporter Raises Alarm Over Misuse of Data Privacy Law Against Journalists

Misael Gonzales Jr., a reporter for DZRH, was arrested after a Manila councilor filed a case against him for allegedly violating the Data Privacy Act for reporting on an arrest warrant earlier issued against the councilor for allegedly sexually abusing a child.

Oil Price Hikes Violate Your Rights. Here’s How.

What deregulation does, structurally and predictably, is erode the conditions necessary for those rights to be fulfilled — not through a single dramatic act, but through a slow, compounding cascade.

Oil, Power, and the Politics of Deregulation in the Philippines

When pricing systems deepen poverty, they implicate the state’s duty to protect, particularly when the state created those systems.

One Year On, DDS Should Let Go

EDITORIAL: What is at stake in this anniversary of Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest by the ICC is not one man’s freedom or one man’s legacy. What is at stake is whether Philippine society can hold the powerful to the same standard it demands of everyone else.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

He Tried to Correct the Record. He’s Looking at 12 Years in Prison Instead.

Lokalpedia founder John Sherwin Felix challenges a cyberlibel case filed against him over his critique of a government-funded book on regional cuisine. The case, his supporters argue, violates freedom of expression.

EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS

Drug War Killings in the Spotlight at UN Narcotics Side Event

Event in Vienna will be livestreamed at 8 p.m. Manila on Wednesday. Organized by the DRCNet Foundation, drug policy and human rights experts will speak at the event, including Rights Report Philippines’ Carlos Conde.

DISABILITY RIGHTS

Landmark Autism Law Fills Decades-Old Gap in Philippine Disability Rights

For the estimated 1.2 million Filipinos living on the autism spectrum, a new law from the Philippine Senate marks the most significant advance in their rights and welfare in a generation, and a long-overdue correction to a structural blind spot in the country’s disability rights architecture.

The move by the Office of the Solicitor General, praised by press freedom advocates, puts pressure on the OSG to act with similar boldness in a far broader swath of cases involving journalists and activists ensnared in what human rights groups have long described as a pattern of politically motivated cases based on trumped-up charges.

Historic Oil Price Hike: Severe Impact on Livelihood, Rights of Poor, Marginalized Filipinos

Transport groups have announced strike threat while Ibon Foundation calls government measures “cosmetic.” Because of the impacts, the increase also raises concern about violations of international human rights laws.

ICC Hearings Offered Mindanao Folk a Crash Course on International Justice

Residents in the southern Philippines, the bailiwick of Rodrigo Duterte, got an unexpected civic education as Duterte’s confirmation hearings exposed Filipinos to a brand of accountability they rarely see at home

The Weight of the Room

Rights Report Philippines editor Carlos Conde reflects on his coverage of the ICC hearings two weeks ago, and pays tribute to the people who were inside and outside that room in The Hague

Dear Rights Report Philippines subscribers,

We are excited to let you know that Rights Report Philippines is on track to build its online presence and has started to produce stories and posts on the human rights situation in the Philippines. Although the content is still limited, we will publish more soon. And we are confident that we will soon ramp up our operations.

Some quick updates:

• We have made a public call inviting journalists to contribute stories to Rights Report Philippines, and we have received quite a few queries and expressions of interest. We should see new content in the coming days from these committed journalists.

• Our advisory board, made up of respected journalists and defenders in the Philippines, maintains constant communication with us. We shall disclose their identities in due time, perhaps when we hold our official launch. Their insight into the mission of Rights Report Philippines has been invaluable.

• Speaking of mission, we have published on the site our manifesto on why we’re doing human rights journalism. You can read it here; please let us know what you think!

• Our website, www.rightsreport.org, is finally online. This is going to be the main platform for Rights Report Philippines content. We will, of course, continue disseminating our stories and materials using our growing social media accounts, all of which use the handle @rightsreportph.

• Mainstream publications have started to reprint a few of our stories. You can find them here and here (Inquirer), here (BusinessMirror), and here (photo in Khaleej Times). We expect more reprints or reposts of our materials in the coming weeks. We are allowing republication of our materials as part of our advocacy.

Over the weekend, we published these stories on our new website. (Note that we will only post on Substack once a day a list of the materials we posted that day. You will no longer receive a notification of each story posted, although we will also post each story as it arrives through Substack’s Notes section.)

Why Human Rights Journalism? (A Manifesto)

Laughing Emojis Directed at Children Killed in ‘Drug War’: The Babaylan as Antidote

ICC Keeps Duterte Behind Bars, Rejects Health Argument

UN Experts Urged to Call Out Anti-Terrorism Frameworks by UN, FATF That Enabled Targeting of Journalists, Activists

UN Experts Call for Release of Philippine Journalist and Rights Defender Convicted of Terror Financing

Grab Giveth and Grab Taketh Back—with Astronomical Interest.

Lawyers’ Group Seeks Supreme Court Protection for Negros Attorney, Development Workers

Let us know what you think of these stories. And we hope you have a wonderful week ahead!

All the best,

Caloy / Carlos

INTRODUCING: The website of Rights Report Philippines: https://rightsreport.org/

We will post on the site stories and updates as soon as they’re ready. The site will be the main platform of Rights Report Philippines.

What happens to our Substack (www.rightsreportph.org)? No worries. At the end of each day, we will publish there a summary of the day’s stories. We will also use it for our regular round-up of human rights news from the Philippines.

Our social media handles remain the same: @rightsreportph.

The website is a work in progress, so apologies if you encounter any navigation error.

YOU have to hand it to Grab — or rather, Grab will take it from you anyway, daily, whether you like it or not.

The Southeast Asian ride-hailing and food delivery behemoth, which dominates markets from Manila to Singapore, has found a tidy little side hustle: lending money to its own motorcycle riders in the Philippines at interest rates exceeding 230 percent per annum. Labor rights group Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) is calling it exactly what it looks like — predatory.

The arrangement, exposed in a March 3 feature by Nikkei Asia journalist Michael Beltran, works something like this: Grab offers in-app loans to its riders, dangling them as rewards for good performance. Handy, right? The cash comes fast, the terms look manageable, and the daily deductions are automatic. It’s almost too convenient — which, of course, is rather the point.

Take “John,” cited in the Nikkei Asia report. He borrowed P11,000 for bike repairs and tune-up. By the time his 150-day repayment cycle was done, he had paid P14,294 — a deduction of P95.30 every single day. That’s a P3,294 premium on an P11,000 loan. And that’s the smaller loan. For workers who take the full P13,000 option — which, delightfully, is the only qualifying amount for Grab’s monthly raffle — the daily bite is P62.07 for 360 days, totaling P22,343.

“The loans with their interests may be legal and may even be convenient to workers,” said CTUHR executive director Kamz Deligente in a statement. “But it cannot be denied that workers’ incomes are being reduced and Grab, the employer, is earning from this.”

Here’s the twist that makes the whole thing particularly galling: miss a daily payment, and Grab stops sending you bookings. No bookings, no income. No income, no repayment. The workers Grab has loaned money to are, in effect, locked into working — for Grab — to pay back Grab. It is elegant, in a deeply troubling way.

A Fairwork Philippines 2025 report adds weight to the concern, noting that Grab already falls short on ensuring minimum wages, providing protective equipment, and respecting workers’ freedom of association. Platform companies have long hidden behind the “partner” label to dodge employer responsibilities. But a company that isn’t guaranteeing its workers minimum wage while simultaneously profiting from their financial desperation has, critics argue, grabbed far more than it has any right to.

“Ironically, by not ensuring workers’ minimum wages, Grab is earning more from workers’ desire to earn more,” Deligente said.

Grab has defended the loan program, framing it as a benefit. But critics argue that what Grab is really offering isn’t a benefit — it’s a trap wrapped in a rewards program.

The loans may be legal. But legal, as the workers paying them back daily would likely agree, is not the same as right. Grab may be the biggest platform in Southeast Asia. That doesn’t mean it should be in the business of grabbing from the very hands that built it. (Rights Report Philippines)

UNITED Nations special rapporteurs are calling for the immediate release on bail of journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio and human rights defender Marielle Domequil following their conviction in the Philippines on charges of financing terrorism, but critics say the UN expert’s intervention is undercut by the body’s own role in building the legal framework used against them.

“Frenchie and Marielle have suffered six years of pre-trial detention and a fraught legal process with a string of charges that have been widely criticised as baseless and in retaliation for their human rights work,” the experts said in a statement issued from Geneva on Friday. “At a minimum, they should be released on bail while they pursue their appeal.”

The two women were arrested on February 7, 2020, following months of “red-tagging” and harassment attributed to state agents. They were initially charged with illegal possession of firearms and explosives and held without the possibility of bail. A year and a half after their arrest, an additional charge of financing terrorism was filed. Judicial proceedings did not begin until November 11, 2024 — nearly five years after their detention. In January 2026, the Regional Trial Court of Tacloban City acquitted them of all charges except financing terrorism, for which they now face between 12 and 18 years in prison.

“Given the serious concerns about the unconscionable length of time that the two young women have already spent in detention and the lack of due process, but also a possibility now of provisional release, we urge the court to grant them bail without any further delay,” the experts said. “Frenchie and Marielle deserve to be free to fight for justice.”

The statement was issued by five rapporteurs covering freedom of expression, counter-terrorism, freedom of assembly, human rights defenders, and judicial independence. The experts said they are in contact with the Philippine government on the matter.

But Ephraim Cortez, a lawyer and president of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), while welcoming the statement, pointed to what he called a glaring omission, one that cuts to the heart of the UN’s credibility on the issue.

“The counter-terrorism laws, together with court processes, were used as a legal cover to justify the search, and the eventual arrest of Frenchie and Marielle,” Cortez said. “They were targeted not because they were engaged in any terrorism or financing terrorism activities, but because it was part of the government’s strategy to stifle dissent.”

Cortez noted that the Philippine government’s counter-terrorism measures were designed and implemented in accordance with the UN’s own global counter-terrorism strategy — the very framework that one of the five rapporteurs who signed the statement, Ben Saul, is mandated to help implement.

Adopted by consensus in 2006 through UN General Assembly Resolution 60/288, the strategy rests on four pillars: measures to address the conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism; measures to prevent and combat terrorism; measures to build state capacity; and measures to ensure respect for human rights and the rule of law as the fundamental basis of counter-terrorism.

That fourth pillar, which is supposed to serve as the strategy’s human rights safeguard, has long been criticized as the weakest of the four. In practice, the human rights and rule of law pillar is widely regarded as profoundly under-resourced and lacking the institutional capacity to deliver on its objectives within the global counter-terrorism architecture. Critics note that human rights in the context of the UN’s counter-terrorism work is most often minimized to a generic line in a resolution, under-funded in its programming, and scattered across overlapping mandates without sufficient resources or support.

This structural weakness, advocates argue, is precisely what makes the framework exploitable. Saul, the UN’s own special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, has warned of the “rampant weaponization of overly broad terrorism offenses against civil society, including political opponents, activists, human rights defenders, journalists, minorities, and students.”

Compounding the problem, NUPL’s Cortez said, is the role of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the intergovernmental body that sets global standards for combating terrorist financing. The FATF is formally integrated into the UN’s counter-terrorism coordination framework, having been included in the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact since it was launched by the Secretary-General in December 2018. Yet while the FATF rigorously evaluates member states on compliance with its financial monitoring recommendations, it imposes no standards and recommends no sanctions for human rights violations committed in the name of that compliance.

The consequences of that gap have been stark and well-documented in the Philippine context. Human Rights Watch reported that following the Philippines’ grey-listing by the FATF in 2021, the Philippine government ramped up its filing of terrorism financing cases, with its 2023–2027 national strategy on money laundering and terrorism financing prioritizing increased capacity to investigate and prosecute terrorism financing — steps that led to the removal of the Philippines off the grey list in early 2025. Most of those cases, HRW found, appeared to involve not actual terrorist networks but individuals and organizations accused of having links to the Communist Party of the Philippines — including workers and activists with civil society groups, clergy, and journalists.

The scale of the crackdown was sweeping. According to NUPL and allied groups, there was a 371% surge in the number of terrorism financing complaints filed by the Philippine government in 2024 alone, many of them aimed at progressive organizations involved in humanitarian work, agrarian reform, environmental advocacy, and community development. A confidential police memorandum obtained by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism made the government’s motivation explicit: the document linked the prosecution of at least one activist in the Ilocos region directly to an internal operation labeled “Project Exit the Greylist.”

While the FATF acknowledged the Philippines’ progress upon removing it from the grey list in February 2025, it also emphasized the need to ensure that counter-terrorism financing measures are appropriately applied and “are neither discouraging nor disrupting legitimate NPO activity.” That caveat did little to satisfy human rights groups.

NUPL criticized the FATF for congratulating the Philippines without acknowledging the rampant misuse of counter-terrorism financing laws to silence dissent and criminalize civil society, arguing that the surge in fabricated cases, arbitrary asset freezes, and financial exclusion were not unintended consequences of compliance but “deliberate tactics used to satisfy the FATF’s mandates at the cost of human rights.” HRW noted that even after the Philippines was removed from the grey list, new terrorism financing charges continued to be filed against civil society groups and activists.

“The global strategy, and the FATF recommendations, are being used by the Philippine government as a weapon against dissent,” Cortez said.

Cortez called on the Special Rapporteurs to go beyond advocating for individual cases and formally demand that both the UN and the FATF overhaul the global counter-terrorism framework to include enforceable human rights safeguards.

“It is about time that the Special Rapporteurs should call out the United Nations and the FATF to review the global strategy on terrorism and the FATF recommendations to provide safeguards to protect human rights, and provide sanctions for any violation,” he said.

Without such reforms, he warned, the pattern would repeat.

“Unless such safeguards are implemented and sanctions are imposed for violation of international human rights and international humanitarian laws, there will be other Frenchie Maes and Marielles.”

In a Facebook post, Carlos Conde, the former HRW researcher who worked on the group’s research on so-called “terror-tagging” in the Philippines, asked the UN experts if they “made representations with the FATF… whose ‘recommendations’ to governments such as the Philippines underpin the drive to prosecute more activists to satisfy the task force, no matter how flimsy or nonexistent the pieces of evidence are?” (Conde is the editor of Rights Report Philippines.)

The cases have drawn wider attention to the use of anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering laws in the Philippines to target journalists, lawyers, and activists — a practice human rights groups have labeled “red-tagging.” Critics say the government designates dissidents as communist sympathizers or terrorist affiliates, then uses counter-terrorism statutes to justify arrests and asset freezes.

The UN Special Rapporteurs have not yet responded publicly to the NUPL’s broader critique of the international framework’s role in enabling such practices. (Rights Report Philippines)

Rights Report Philippines, a new nonprofit journalism outfit that covers the news through a human rights lens, is inviting freelance journalists in the Philippines to avail of these reporting opportunities. We need one journalist to report on each of the following human rights “sub-beats.”

1. Civil and Political Rights: Freedoms of speech, assembly, press, torture, extrajudicial killings, harassment of activists and civil society actors.

2. Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Housing, food security, education access, labor rights, and healthcare.

3. Criminal Justice and Detention: Police brutality, prison conditions, solitary confinement, and wrongful convictions.

4. Refugee and Migration Rights: OFWs, asylum seekers, stateless persons, border conditions, and deportation.

5. Women’s and Gender Rights: Reproductive rights, gender-based violence, femicide, and workplace discrimination.

6. Children’s Rights: Child labor, education, juvenile justice, and child sexual abuse.

7. Indigenous and Minority Rights: Land rights, discrimination, displacement of IP communities, self-determination.

8. Digital Rights and Surveillance: Privacy, internet freedom, censorship, and algorithmic discrimination.

9. Environmental and Climate Rights: The right to a clean environment, climate displacement, and the disproportionate impact on vulnerable communities. Also the impact of mining and extractive industries.

10. Corporate Accountability: Business and human rights — supply chain abuses, land grabs by corporations, and labor exploitation.

Since Rights Report Philippines is still starting out, we do not have the funds (yet) to hire full-time reporters. But we can provide:

• A monthly retainer

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Padayon!

Carlos Conde
Editor

Editorial

IT’S Women’s Month. And a Philippine congressman just told a formal legislative hearing about the time he saw the actor Anne Curtis at a hotel and felt his blood run hot imagining what could happen between them.

Quezon City Representative Bong Suntay actually said the words out loud: “Nakita ko si Anne Curtis… may desire sa loob ko na nag-init talaga.” He said this in Congress, during a hearing on the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte. When his colleagues voted to strike it, he complained about censorship.

When called out, Suntay said there was nothing wrong with what he said. Anne Curtis, he said, should take it as a compliment, but if anyone was offended, he was sorry — but not sorry enough to stop defending himself.

We’ve seen this before.

Flashback to 2016, when Rodrigo Duterte became president.

Duterte, of course, didn’t create misogyny in the Philippines. But he gave it a podium and six years of prime time. He made inappropriate comments about Vice President Leni Robredo’s legs, joked about raping a Miss Universe and an Australian nun who was held hostage, and equated having a second partner to keeping a spare tire in the trunk of a car. He told soldiers to shoot female rebels in the vagina, because without it, he said, they’d be useless. He casually confessed to groping a sleeping maid when he was a teenager and the crowd barely blinked.

Every time someone called it out, Malacañang said the same thing: he’s joking. Stop overreacting. You’re being OA.

But women weren’t overreacting – they paid attention. When you have a president doing that, gender experts warned, you reinforce the idea that sexual violence is acceptable — that it’s manly, even. That the “real man” acts exactly like this. Duterte didn’t just show us who he was. He gave every man watching permission to be the same.

Nothing makes this clearer than what he did to former senator and now congresswoman Leila de Lima.

De Lima had the nerve to investigate his drug war killings. So he destroyed her — not with evidence, but with her womanhood. He publicly claimed to have a sex tape of her and her driver. He called her immoral, an adulterer. His allies in the House threatened to screen the alleged tape in a congressional hearing, claiming it would prove how close she was to her supposed accomplice. She started receiving death threats. Her phone number was read aloud in a government hearing. She had to flee her own home.

She later explained his strategy plainly: he thought of “first demeaning me and destroying my womanhood so that more people would believe their accusations.” It worked. Millions believed him. She was arrested in 2017 on drug charges built almost entirely on the testimony of convicted criminals. Key witnesses later recanted, with one appearing on television in tears to apologize for lying under oath on government orders.

It took nearly seven years and the dropping of all three charges before de Lima was finally free. That is what normalized misogyny enables.

Back to Bong Suntay.

Here’s the kicker: Suntay was once a Quezon City councillor who helped pass the Bawal Bastos Ordinance — the local law that penalizes lewd and demeaning remarks in public. He helped write the rules he now refuses to follow. And he made his remarks at the start of Women’s Month. In a country that has laws on the books — the Safe Spaces Act, the Magna Carta of Women — specifically to protect women from exactly this.

The Philippine Commission on Women has made clear that his words are not just offensive but potentially actionable — they bear the hallmarks of gender-based sexual harassment under the Safe Spaces Act. Senator Risa Hontiveros, who authored that law, has already said it plainly: “Statements of sexual comments and suggestions can be penalized. As a lawmaker, he should know this.”

So file the case. Don’t just ask for an apology. Don’t accept one that begins with “if.” Take him to the House Ethics Committee. Pursue the complaint under RA 11313. Make it cost something to speak about women this way from a seat of power. Because if there are no consequences, there will be more Suntays. There have always been more Suntays. Duterte proved there is an entire bench of them, waiting their turn.

Hold Suntay accountable. File the cases. And let’s finally stop these men from abusing women with their vile words and thoughts. (Rights Report Philippines)

By Carlos H. Conde
Rights Report Philippines

I HAD the privilege of seeing what has been called a turning point for justice and accountability in the Philippines last week in The Hague. Rodrigo Duterte was physically absent from the Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court during the confirmation of charges hearings, but he was definitely there. Duterte gained power not only through incendiary bluster but also by launching a “drug war” that killed thousands of people and caused the nation’s worst human rights crisis since World War II. So his absence didn’t matter as much to those who were there—the victims’ families and their supporters—as what the event symbolized: that justice, albeit a slow-moving one, is finally within reach.

For years, Duterte dared the world. He cursed the ICC and the international community, withdrew the Philippines from the Rome Statute, and boasted openly about the killings carried out under his “war on drugs.” He governed as though impunity were his birthright. History and the law are now proving him wrong.

Duterte was arrested in Manila in March last year, flown to the Netherlands, and placed in the ICC’s detention unit at Scheveningen Prison in The Hague—the same facility that once held war criminals Slobodan Milosevic and Charles Taylor. The ICC confirmation of charges hearing concluded last week, with judges now deliberating on whether to send the case to full trial. The arguments for why that trial will happen—and why it should—are overwhelming. But so is the argument that a trial or conviction alone will not be enough to end impunity in the Philippines.

Duterte’s most persistent legal defense has been the claim that the ICC has no authority over him. It is a hollow argument that serves mainly to rouse his diehard supporters. Questioning jurisdiction is also in the playbook by international lawyers such as Nicholas Kaufman—the aim is to kill the case before it even gets traction.

The Philippines was a party to the Rome Statute from November 1, 2011, up until its withdrawal took effect on March 17, 2019. The ICC, therefore, has jurisdiction over crimes committed during that period. This is not a novel legal interpretation—it is the plain text of Article 127 of the Rome Statute, which expressly preserves the court’s jurisdiction over crimes committed before a withdrawal takes effect.

The defense has appealed the jurisdiction ruling, but the court has firmly held that it retains authority over covered crimes committed from 2011 to 2019. Multiple ICC chambers have consistently upheld this framework. Duterte’s team is fighting a legal battle on terrain that has already been decisively lost.

Duterte faces three counts of crimes against humanity: murders and attempted murders allegedly carried out within the covered period, spanning his time as mayor of Davao City and as president of the Philippines. ICC prosecutors have charged Duterte with crimes against humanity for at least 76 murder cases from 2013 to 2018, while the true number of killings during his campaign is thought to be as high as 30,000.

The evidentiary record is not thin. The ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor has disclosed thousands of items of evidence to the defense, including witness statements, documentary material, audio-visual material, and forensic and contextual evidence. That volume of disclosure reflects years of serious investigative work, not a political witch hunt.

The legal theory underpinning the charges is also well-established in ICC jurisprudence. ICC judges have found reasonable grounds to believe that Duterte is individually responsible as an indirect co-perpetrator for the crime against humanity of murder. The concept of “indirect co-perpetration”—whereby a commander who dominates an organizational apparatus is held responsible for crimes carried out through it—was developed and affirmed in previous ICC cases. Crucially, the ICC’s own Pre-Trial Chamber has noted that domestic proceedings in the Philippines “only address the physical, low-ranking perpetrators and at present do not extend to any high-ranking officials.” This finding is damning: the Philippine justice system, left to its own devices, has been protecting those at the top of the chain of command.

The defense made an audacious bid to halt proceedings entirely, claiming Duterte was mentally unfit. Following a request for an indefinite adjournment, the chamber appointed a panel of three independent medical experts in forensic psychiatry, neuropsychology, and geriatric and behavioral neurology. On January 26, 2026, the chamber found Duterte fit to take part in the pre-trial proceedings. The court’s process was rigorous and conclusive. The clock could not be stopped.

Nobody is above the law. That principle is not rhetorical—it is the founding premise of the Rome Statute, which is the treaty that established the ICC and outlines its functions and jurisdiction. Duterte is the first Asian former head of state to appear before the ICC, a historic milestone that signals the court’s reach is not limited to Africa or the Balkans, as Duterte and his supporters have always claimed.

But let us be clear about what an ICC conviction can and cannot do. The trial of Rodrigo Duterte, no matter how just or necessary, will not dismantle the structures that made his “war on drugs” possible. The ICC trial is limited by its focus on individual guilt and juridical process. The ICC cannot rebuild the communities devastated by decades of neglect and violence. It cannot reweave the frayed social contract between the state and its people and between and among Filipinos who found themselves at opposing ends of a fiery and alienating national discourse.

Apart from the arrest of Duterte, there’s almost zero accountability for those responsible for these deaths, mainly law enforcement agencies and others involved in the violence. And although drug war violence has decreased, incidents are still being reported. The drug war as a policy stands under the Marcos administration.

This void is the gap that must be filled—and it can only be filled at home.

Prioritizing comprehensive law enforcement reforms is a baseline, not a ceiling. What is required is a wholesale reckoning: an honest-to-goodness overhaul of law enforcement culture, where the use of drug watch lists and vigilante-style operations is replaced by due process and proportionate policing.

The country’s drug policy requires comprehensive reform. Harm reduction needs to be institutionalized. The Philippine government needs to end its punitive approach to drugs entirely and to provide adequate health and harm reduction services for people who use drugs that are evidence-based and respectful of the rights and dignity of all people. Criminalization-first approaches have been proven, repeatedly and globally, to fail the poor while leaving the narcotics trade intact.

Evidence-based treatment, decriminalization of drug use, and investment in communities gutted by poverty—these are not soft alternatives to accountability. They are its necessary complement.

The criminal justice system, too, demands serious reform. Domestic accountability mechanisms have failed. Prosecutors, judges, and investigators must be genuinely insulated from political interference. Witness protection must be real and robust—people are afraid, supporters of the proceedings are branded as enemies of the state, and some are even forcibly disappeared.

The international community needs to step up as well. The UN Human Rights Council, the European Union, and foreign governments must enhance their efforts to ensure that all available mechanisms are fully utilized rather than merely serving as public-relations opportunities for embassies and diplomats. Human rights need to be at the center of foreign trade agreements or ongoing negotiations for them, especially given how ineffective, for instance, the EU’s GSP+ program has been at making a dent against the “drug war” violence while it was happening.

Civil society, for its part, must be allowed to do its work without fear. The organizations that documented the killings, supported the families, and carried the evidence to The Hague did so at personal risk. They deserve protection, not persecution.

The trial of Rodrigo Duterte will happen. Indeed, it is a watershed moment for accountability in the Philippines and in Asia and a vindication of international justice. But without real reforms of the police, the drug laws, the courts, and the political culture that shielded mass killing for years, impunity in the Philippines will simply wear a different face.

At the ICC last week, as some families of victims of the “drug war” made the difficult effort to recount to anyone who would listen how the “drug war” upended their lives, it became even clearer to me and many of those present that the thousands and thousands who died in the violence deserve more than a verdict in The Hague. They deserve a country that will never allow this to happen again. (Rights Report Philippines)

Carlos Conde is the editor of Rights Report Philippines. Before that, he was the Philippines researcher for Human Rights Watch and the freelance correspondent in Manila for The New York Times. Since the late 1990s, he has reported extensively on the human rights violations linked to Rodrigo Duterte while he was mayor of Davao City and later as the president of the Philippines.

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This story is free for republication or reposting as long as proper attribution or credit is given to Rights Report Philippines.

But who are these witnesses? While the ICC has not disclosed their identities — it won’t — and redacted any references to them in case documents, the speculation is that one of them must be Edgar Matobato, a self-confessed member of the Davao Death Squad, erstwhile known in Davao as the “Lambada Boys.”

In this video interview conducted by Rights Report Philippines editor Carlos Conde back in 2016, before Matobato testified at the September 2016 Senate hearing on extrajudicial killings, Matobato detailed the creation of the DDS. He said Duterte’s people recruited him in 1988 and, along with other members, went on a killing spree in the city for years while the Dutertes were in positions of power.

“I thought we were doing something good,” Matobato said in the interview conducted entirely in Cebuano.

Read Rights Report Philippines original post about the video, which can be watched on the same page or on YouTube. (Rights Report Philippines)