MANILA – Hours following UN Special Rapporteur Dr. Ian Fry’s recommendation for the government to disband the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), its Vice Chairman and National Security Adviser Secretary Eduardo Año, deems his report “incomplete”.

In a statement, Año says they take “strong exception” to the call made by Fry to disband the task force “based on allegations of violations against environmental human rights defenders.”

The former AFP chief also said that Fry, while given the freedom to move around, observe and assess the country’s climate change situation, it wasn’t done exhaustively.

“In the interest of fairness and justice, he should have raised his concerns with us to ensure that he has full appreciation of the body’s mandate, operations, and over-all directions. Sadly, even if he had issues on the NTF ELCAC that are relevant to his report, he did not find time to do so,” the statement read.

He also assured the UN expert that the NTF-ELCAC “is a working and effective human rights mechanism”.

“We could have assisted him in engaging with our stakeholders who are peace and human rights stakeholders and defenders. We could have informed him of the NTF-ELCAC’s flagship programs, advocacies, and thrusts to achieve genuine peace, unity and development, especially in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas that once served as hotbeds of communist terrorism.”

Fry was in the Philippines for 10 days to check on and make reports and recommendations on several thematic issues.

The findings he presented to the media on Wednesday is an interim report. A final report will be submitted to the Human Rights Council in June 2024.