Marcos Jr.’s campaign for a non-permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council is a profound insult to the thousands of victims of state violence, killings, and aerial bombings in the Philippines.
While Marcos Jr. seeks a position in the world’s highest intergovernmental body tasked with maintaining international peace and security, entire communities across the Philippine countryside continue to endure the consequences of his counterrevolutionary war marked by militarization, forced displacement, political persecution, and persistent violations of international humanitarian law.
Since assuming office in 2022, there have been at least 135 cases of extrajudicial killings and 48,247 documented victims of forced evacuations under the Marcos Jr. regime. At least 57,156 victims of relentless aerial bombing campaigns and 70,028 victims of indiscriminate firing have been documented.
Marcos Jr. also cannot credibly present itself as a government advancing peace. Under its leadership, the already fragile peace process between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines has reached a continuing impasse, marked by Marcos Jr.’s refusal to meaningfully re-engage with substantive negotiations on agrarian reform and national industrialization. Instead of advancing structural solutions to longstanding social, economic, and political grievances, the Marcos Jr. administration has continued to insist on a military-centered approach, persistently disregarding the need to address the root causes of the armed conflict.
His bid for a seat at the UN Security Council is made even more objectionable by his regime’s wholesale surrender of Philippine sovereignty. True to his puppet character, Marcos Jr has consistently aligned himself with US warmongering interests in the region by expanding EDCA (Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement) sites, allowing four new locations in Cagayan, Isabela and Palawan, bringing the total to nine. His willing participation in the US-led Pax Silica initiative will also surrender a massive 4,000-acre land in Central Luzon for the US to use as a critical minerals and tech manufacturing hub in support of Washington’s growing weapons supply chain.
Far from what he projects as an “independent administration,” his regime has allowed the unfettered encroachment of US military troops into Philippine soil through the largest-ever Balikatan exercises last April with at least 17,000 troops participating from the US, Australia, Japan, Canada, France and New Zealand. He recklessly risked the Filipino masses’ lives by firing a Tomahawk missile that passed through civilian areas from Tacloban, Leyte to Laur, Nueva Ecija last May 5.
The UN Security Council is widely recognized as a compromised body, where the veto power of a handful of imperialist states routinely paralyzes any form of meaningful action to protect peace. However, even within this deeply discredited framework, Marcos Jr.’s bid for a non-permanent seat sends a profoundly wrong signal. It suggests that regimes actively complicit in militarization of communities and repression can be elevated as “credible” arbiters of international peace and security.
A government that has failed to deliver justice and peace at home cannot credibly claim the mantle of peace abroad. A government associated with widespread bloodshed, repression, and impunity has no moral authority to help shape decisions affecting international peace and security matters.
It is only upon the victory of the national democratic revolution and the establishment of the People’s Democratic Government shall the Filipino people assume its rightful place and representation in the United Nations and the international community.
source: NDFP International Office