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Marcos’ new human rights ‘super body’: abuse window-dressing in the Philippines?

  • Critics call the new body a ‘desperate attempt to window-dress’ abuses and a distraction meant to ‘deodorise’ the Philippines’ dire rights reputation
  • His creation of the committee comes amid the president’s ongoing efforts to rebrand himself a human rights defender on the international stage

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Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr. Activists say his new human rights committee lacks substance and have called it an attempt to conceal ongoing human rights violations. Photo: Reuters
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr’s creation of an inter-agency human rights “super body” has been met with scepticism by rights activists, who view it as an effort to sidestep accountability for the country’s ongoing rights abuses.
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Jose Deinla, secretary general of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers – a nationwide voluntary organisation of lawyers and law students providing pro bono legal services – told This Week in Asia that Marcos Jnr had everything to gain from establishing the committee as it “deodorises his administration’s odious human rights record and distracts attention from grave human rights and international humanitarian law violations”.

Marcos Jnr last week signed an administrative order to create the Special Committee on Human Rights Coordination, which the Presidential Communications Office described in a press release as a “super body” that will take a “human rights-based approach towards drug control and counterterrorism”.

The committee will fall under the Presidential Human Rights Committee and is meant to replace the structures established by a United Nations Joint Programme, which focused on building capacity and technical cooperation on human rights reforms, after it ends on July 21.

Marcos Jnr’s executive secretary, essentially the president’s chief of staff, will co-chair the committee alongside the justice secretary, with the secretaries of foreign affairs, interior, and local governments serving as members.

Supporters and relatives of the victims of former Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs hold a rally in Metro Manila on May 1. Photo: EPA-EFE
Supporters and relatives of the victims of former Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs hold a rally in Metro Manila on May 1. Photo: EPA-EFE
The move comes amid Marcos Jnr’s ongoing attempt to rebrand himself as a defender of human rights on the international stage. Experts have described it as a deliberate move to distance his image from that of his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, who has turned from being one of Marcos Jnr’s allies to a bitter political rival.
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