KARAPATAN ON THE 28TH ANNIVERSARY OF CARHRIHL
KARAPATAN Public Information
PRESS STATEMENT
16 March 2026
Reference: Cristina Palabay, KARAPATAN secretary general, 09173162831
KARAPATAN Public Information Desk, 09189790580
KARAPATAN ON THE 28TH ANNIVERSARY OF CARHRIHL
The 16th of March 2026 marks the 28th anniversary of the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL). The CARHRIHL was the first comprehensive agreement to be signed in the four-point substantive agenda of the peace talks between the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP). Its signing is a recognition of the reality of human rights violations as well as violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) amid the ongoing armed conflict between the two parties and the need to mitigate suffering and find principled ways to render justice to the victims of these violations.
Crafted over a period of 11 months, the CARHRIHL has run the course of five GRP presidents from Joseph Estrada to Ferdinand Marcos Jr. A Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC) set up to oversee its implementation reported in 2018 a total of 6,898 violations, more than 70% of them against the GRP. The violations included, among others, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture and arbitrary arrests.
The NDFP section of the JMC ceased operating in 2018, a casualty of the demise of the peace talks under Duterte. The GRP dismantled its JMC section even earlier. Despite the current absence of the JMC, however, and the GRP’s consistent non-compliance, the CARHRIHL remains a landmark document in the history of the struggle for human rights and IHL in the Philippines.
Concretely, it was under its auspices that several violations of human rights and IHL including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, illegal or arbitrary arrests, torture, detention, bombings and forcible evacuation, have been reported for the attention of the Philippine government. Former UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings Prof. Philip Alston had referred to these reported violations in his report on the human rights situation in the Philippines. Likewise, several NDFP consultants were released from jail to join the peace talks in 2016 and thousands of victims of human rights violations under martial law received compensation. A number of political prisoners had also been freed in exchange for the release of prisoners of war held by the New People’s Army.
The CARHRIHL raised the bar for adherence to human rights and IHL principles in the context of the Philippine civil war and helped in building a positive atmosphere for the continuation of the peace talks. For this, it has certainly been more useful to the cause of peace and human rights than the “human rights bodies” created by Ferdinand Marcos Jr. for PR purposes.
The GRP under Duterte and Marcos Jr. has unilaterally discarded the CARHRIHL along with all other agreements signed in the course of the peace process since the 1990s. Under the surrender framework it has been foisting on the NDFP as opposed to addressing the roots of the armed conflict, it has been arresting, killing and forcibly disappearing NDFP consultants and staff, filling its jails with political prisoners and resisting the enactment of a new enabling law that would provide reparations to thousands of other martial law victims who failed to be compensated under the previous law.
Under two and a half years of the Marcos Jr. regime alone, there have already been 135 victims of extrajudicial killing (EJK), 17 victims of enforced disappearance and 45 victims of torture. Five of the EJK victims and one of those forcibly disappeared were NDFP consultants. As of December 2026, there were 697 political prisoners, 15 of them NDFP consultants.
In the most recent case, Gabriel Kennedy Bangibang, the NDFP consultant for the Cordilleras and national minorities, was arrested on March 12, 2026 in violation of the CARHRIHL and the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees.
Bombings and aerial strafing were conducted by the military in civilian communities in Abra de Ilog, Occidental Mindoro on January 1, 2026 in violation of IHL. These attacks were the latest among the bombing incidents which affected thousands of rural and indigenous communities.
As part of its capitulationist framework, an amnesty cum surrender program (whose deadline was on March 13) was peddled by the government. The lapse of the Marcos Jr. regime’s amnesty ploy is expected to lead to more red-tagging, harassment and arrests of activists as well as other human rights violations.
Of particular concern is the increasing incursions into schools by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), including youth groups tagged as communist fronts. The NTF-ELCAC’s heavy presence in campuses infringes on academic freedom as well as freedom of expression, association, and assembly.
Twenty-eight years on, the CARHRIHL, despite these challenges, provides a viable framework for grasping human rights principles and asserting human rights and international humanitarian law. No matter the continuing contempt exhibited by successive GRP regimes for the CARHRIHL and the principles it stands for, it is a document embraced by the people as their own, forged in the course of their unrelenting struggle to build a society marked by lasting peace based on justice, genuine respect for human dignity and adherence to the entire range of people’s rights.
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KARAPATAN is an alliance of human rights organizations and programs, human rights desks and committees of people’s organizations, and individual advocates committed to the defense and promotion of people’s rights and civil liberties. It monitors and documents cases of human rights violations, assists and defends victims and conducts education, training and campaign. It was established in 1995.