NUPL TO SECRETARY TEODORO: IF WE ARE “AT PEACE,” WHY DOES THE ARMED CONFLICT PERSIST
Regardless of whether peace talks resume, the GRP remains legally obligated under both domestic and international law to observe and respect international humanitarian law and human rights — and such obligations are legally demandable and enforceable. NUPL thus reiterates its call for full accountability for the Toboso killings.
May 4, 2026
NUPL
The National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers is a nationwide voluntary association of human rights lawyers in the Philippines, committed to the defense, protection, and promotion of human rights, especially of the poor and the oppressed.

Press Statement
3 May 2026

Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. dismissed renewed calls to resume GRP-NDFP negotiations, declaring: “The Filipinos are at peace. They are the ones disturbing the peace.” He denies the reality of communities living under sustained militarization and state violence recasting a protracted armed conflict merely as an internal security threat rather than a deep-seated social, economic, and political crisis requiring a negotiated settlement. In Negros, where peasants remain among the poorest in the country — dispossessed and exploited across generations — such a declaration is an insult to their reality.

The calls rejected by Teodoro came from former GRP peace negotiators — lawyers and civil society figures who sat across from the NDFP between 2014 and 2020. They warned that incidents like the Toboso killings further shrink what little room for dialogue remains, and urged the resumption of talks without preconditions. Teodoro responded by saying that to negotiate would be to “elevate the morality of their cause to something legitimate, which I cannot accept.”

Such a bellicose position not only obstructs the resolution of a decades-long armed conflict; it contradicts the Marcos administration’s own campaign for a Philippine seat on the UN Security Council. A government cannot credibly claim that it is a “voice for principled peace” and a “committed peacemaker” abroad while its defense chief forecloses every avenue for peace at home, not least while hosting the largest and most expansive Balikatan exercises in the country’s history.

Regardless of whether peace talks resume, the GRP remains legally obligated under both domestic and international law to observe and respect international humanitarian law and human rights — and such obligations are legally demandable and enforceable. NUPL thus reiterates its call for full accountability for the Toboso killings. ###

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We Will Not Fall for the Lies: On the Toboso Killings and the Military’s Pattern of IHL Violations

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