EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Philippine human rights landscape in 2021 remains ambiguous and disconcerting as it had been in the last five years. The national issues that emerged indicated that even as the incumbent administration approaches the culmination of its term, the country continues to battle crises on many fronts. The easing down of the pandemic in the second half of the year with the vaccine roll-outs and complemented by public cooperation and vigilance on health safety protocols slowly but increasingly steered the nation to improve though precarious stability. However, the impacts on the economy specifically on the small and medium-size enterprises are likely to spill over into the next year or so and the extended process of recovery is expected to require continuing search and adoption of both remedial and durable measures. Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic headlines since 2020, the country continues to witness scenarios that entailed a wide range of implications in relation to human rights. We saw snap shots of these not only in the news disseminated by mass media but in parallel reports to international human rights forums by local human rights monitors and defenders. The human rights narratives in 2021 have been some of the most brazen consisting of major issues that included the following as reported by the Philippine mainstream media: “police respondents to extra-judicial killings being absolved by the courts; delays in judicial adjudication and impunity have continued; government’s inadequate and militarized response to the pandemic; rampant red-tagging of left-leaning individuals and organizations; heightened censorship of members of the media and curbing the right to press freedom; threats and actual attacks to lawyers and those involved in the legal practice; diminution in the rule of law and blurring of the separation of powers between and among the state institutions and branches of government; and the passing of the Anti-Terror Law despite its being one of the most contested in recent history with 36 petitions having been filed to repel it.” It is not surprising that promoting human rights and preventing violations continue to be a steep mountain to climb in 2021. The upward trend in violations is directly connected with the harsh kind of policy environment that has been in force beginning 2016. Since then, an attitude of indifference if not outright contempt by the state leadership of the civil liberties and freedoms specifically of the progressive and political opposition sectors has been quite evident though unofficial. While the last quarter of the year offered a view of a silver lining with the founding and activation of new national political formations together with civic groups vowing to support and elect progressive candidates in the coming national elections, the scenarios built for human rights in the country quickly anticipated a period of rest and convalescence. Pursuing the human rights agenda and asserting its primacy as a paradigm for social reform and development would not however proceed unchallenged. Reports and the threat of conspiracy by some privileged groups with very serious history of fraud and corruption working with incumbent patrons had been present and real since 2016. The country’s oligarchs and politicians from family dynasties who were deposed and sidelined after the 1986 people’s revolution were strategically returning into the picture. Hints of these as reported by legitimate news and information agencies can be described as disguised moves observable in crafty but dubious public information in social media platforms. False information showing as fake news in 2021 and the prior years in all media and information platforms have been rising and immense. The ploy, assisted primarily through bogus social media accounts and their users, has been systematic, consistent, calculated, and hard-hitting, not to mention, very well resourced. The apparent motive was to prepare the way for pre-1986 traditional politics thus re-entrench the actors in the 2022 national elections with the old guards at the helm and their reactionary politics in tow. 5