MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) anticipates that the United Nations Human Rights Council (UN HRC) will not act on the statement of support submitted by a Japanese nongovernmental organization claiming the supposed “arbitrary detention” of former president Rodrigo Duterte.

Duterte, who was Philippine president from 2016 to 2022, is currently detained in the Netherlands and is awaiting trial before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity charges related to his bloody drug war. Arrested in March 2025, Duterte is the first former Philippine head of state to face ICC trial. 

“The United Nations routinely receives such statements and circulates these as a matter of procedure, without comments or any other actions,” said the DFA, which has rarely issued statements related to the case and the detention of Duterte, except in clarifying the role of the Philippine embassy in the Netherlands in relation to the former president. 

“On the statement itself, we anticipate that no action will be taken on it by the Human Rights Council (HRC) or the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). 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 DFA said. 

“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. What the records show are the UN and its member states calling for accountability,” said the DFA. 

The Philippines had sat in the HRC several times in the past, the last in 2021 or just before the end of Duterte’s term. 

ICSA is a Japan-based NGO that has consultative status with another UN body, the United Nations Economic and Social Council. The group’s status in the latter means they are allowed to participate in HRC debates. 

ICSA’s Shunichi Fujiki posted on his personal Facebook page the written statement submitted before the HRC for its 62nd session which begins on June 15 and ends on July 10. In the three-page statement, he claimed political motivations in Duterte’s arrest, accused the ICC of partisanship in Philippine domestic politics, the prosecution’s alleged inflation of statistics in the drug war, and supposed violations of international law in Duterte’s detention. 

Some of his points echo that of Duterte’s lawyers, chief aids and allies, and of his supporters. He also called on the HRC to call on the ICC, an institution that’s separate from the UN, to release Duterte from custody. 

In late April, the ICC’s appeals chamber upheld its jurisdiction over the case of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, which means Duterte should soon face allegations of crimes against humanity on the merits. – Rappler.com