UN will likely ignore 'baseless claims' by NGO urging Duterte release — DFA

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May 21, 2026 | 2:45pm

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines said the United Nations Human Rights Council will likely brush aside written arguments by a Japanese non-government organization seeking to free former President Rodrigo Duterte from the custody of the International Criminal Court.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said in its statement Thursday, May 21, that the UN "routinely receives such statements and circulates these as a matter of procedure, without comments or any other actions." 

"This is not the first time the International Career Support Association (ICSA) has brought these baseless claims before the United Nations. None of its previous actions have borne any fruit," the department said.

The DFA's statement on Thursday marks one of the few times the department has publicly weighed in on matters related to, or adjacent to, the Duterte ICC case since his arrest in March 2025. In its statements or responses to reporters, the DFA usually defers questions to law enforcement or repeats the government's stance on not rejoining the ICC.

ICSA's submission, a three-page document filed on May 19, accuses President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of orchestrating Duterte's transfer to The Hague to weaken the Duterte family before the 2028 elections. 

The submission also asks the council to call on the ICC to release Duterte.

The ICC operates independently of the UN. 

Why exactly a Japanese-based group is taking up Duterte's cause before the UN traces back to one man: Shunichi Fujiki, an ICSA representative who has used the council's General Debate to campaign for the release of the former president. 

He first appealed for Duterte's release on March 11, the first anniversary of the former president's arrest, calling for a "humanitarian review" of his detention. 

Fujiki, identified by ICSA as a researcher, has been described by human rights advocates and Japanese feminist scholars as a nationalist activist with a long record of denying Imperial Japan's wartime sexual slavery.

"He is a Japanese nationalist activist and businessman who has spent over a decade at UN sessions working to deny wartime sexual slavery — to erase the testimony of 'comfort women,' the survivors of Imperial Japan’s system of military sexual slavery during World War II," journalist and rights advocate Carlos Conde said in a March 2026 write-up. 

The DFA statement did not mention Fujiki or address his background. It instead pushed back on the substance of ICSA's submission to the council's 62nd session, which opens in Geneva on June 15. 

"What the records will show is that the actions that have been taken by the HRC and the OHCHR, as well as the statements of a number of States in the HRC and elsewhere, were the direct opposite of the claims in the statement by the ICSA," the department said. "What the records show are the UN and its member states calling for accountability."

During Duterte's presidency, in July 2019, the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution requesting a comprehensive UN report on the human rights situation in the Philippines. 

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights followed in June 2020 with a report finding credible allegations of widespread and systematic extrajudicial killings under the drug war, with near-total impunity.

When Duterte was arrested in March 2025, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called it "an important step toward accountability." 

In April, the ICC unanimously confirmed crimes against humanity charges against Duterte.

The first status conference for his trial will be held next Wednesday, May 27. This meeting will establish the timeline for the trial and the protocols for disclosing evidence, among others.