Human rights violations and the continued narrowing of civic space in the Philippines have reached what a Catholic Church group described as a “moral emergency.”
Bishop Gerardo Alminaza, president of Caritas Philippines, warned that dissent, journalism, and community organizing are increasingly being treated as crimes.
In a Human Rights Day statement, the prelate of San Carlos said “human rights violations and shrinking civic space in the Philippines are converging into one moral emergency,” adding that “defending life, dissent, environmental stewardship, and democratic participation is becoming increasingly dangerous.”
Alminaza cited the CIVICUS Monitor 2025 global assessment, which classifies the Philippines as having a “repressed” civic space, placing it among the most restricted environments in the Asia-Pacific region.
According to the Monitor, peaceful assembly, truthful reporting, humanitarian accompaniment, and community organizing are increasingly criminalized.
It said 2025 saw “a surge of arbitrary arrests, baseless criminal charges, disappearances, harassment, and violent suppression of protests,” particularly targeting activists, Indigenous defenders, transport workers, journalists, and solidarity missions.
In several cases, the group said, “access to lawyers and families was denied, and children were among those arrested during protest actions,” as peaceful dissent is increasingly “being treated as a crime.”
Alminaza drew on data from human rights group Karapatan, covering the period from July 2022 to November 2025, which recorded 134 extrajudicial killings, 14 enforced disappearances, and 85 frustrated killings, largely in conflict areas such as Negros and Bicol.
He also cited hundreds of illegal arrests and detentions, widespread bombings and indiscriminate firing, and forced evacuations that displaced tens of thousands of people.
Rights groups also reported the use of schools, churches, clinics, and other public facilities as military posts, and said an estimated 10.8 million Filipinos have experienced threats, harassment, or intimidation, creating “a climate of fear that is normalized rather than exceptional.”
“These are not isolated cases but systemic patterns,” Alminaza said, citing enforced disappearances, surveillance, profiling, militarization of ancestral lands, censorship of journalists and filmmakers, and attacks on humanitarian and environmental missions.
The erosion of civic space, he added, has direct consequences for democracy. “Without the right to organize, protest, document abuses, or accompany victims, justice becomes unreachable and peace becomes impossible,” the prelate said, warning that “violence against human rights defenders is a violence against democracy itself.”
Framing the issue as a moral and theological concern, Alminaza said, “As Church, we affirm that human rights and civic space are sacred: We cannot preach peace and justice while ignoring the silencing of communities, the killings of organizers, the disappearances of activists, or the harassment of journalists.”
He added that “a society that criminalizes dissent cannot build integral peace,” while “a nation where truth-telling is punished cannot eradicate corruption, ecological plunder, or poverty.”
Caritas Philippines called for urgent actions, including an end to criminalization and red-tagging, protection of civic space for peace talks and humanitarian missions, and the halt of using anti-terror, cybercrime, and sedition laws against nonviolent citizens.
It also urged safeguards for detainees, protection of freedom of expression, and stronger independent monitoring of human rights violations.
Caritas Philippines reaffirmed the Church’s commitment to accompany victims and defenders, document abuses, protect humanitarian space, and open parishes and schools as sanctuaries “for conscience, memory, healing, and solidarity.”
“Let us stand together for life, truth, justice, and democratic space—so that every Filipino can speak without fear, organize without retaliation, defend creation without harassment, worship without militarization, and build peace without disappearing,” said Alminaza.
