Hybrid Moral Ideologies in Human Rights Movements: Instructive Cases From Duterte's Philippines

Abstract

While the Duterte government in the Philippines carried out grave human rights abuses, it failed in pushing for laws that aimed to reinstate the death penalty and to lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR). In these two cases, the Duterte government encountered pushback from issue-based human rights coalitions that curtailed the president's anti-human rights agenda. This article examines the underlying ideologies that influenced and informed human rights movements in these two issues. I argue that rights coalitions that successfully blocked Duterte's anti-human rights policies on the death penalty and MACR utilized hybrid moral ideologies—discourses based on dominant interpretations of religious doctrine and/ or cultural values that align with laws that protect and promote human rights. This manifested in these coalitions’ activities toward harnessing elite and public support for the movement. These findings provide strategies for rights coalitions to contest rights abuses in similar authoritarian contexts.

Introduction

The presidency of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines (2016–2022) resulted in grave human rights abuses that negatively impacted civil and political rights and the rule of law in the country (Freedom House, 2022). However, while creating a generally hostile environment for human rights, especially due to his so-called “war on drugs” (Karapatan, 2023), the Duterte government failed in pushing some laws that would have institutionalized anti-human rights policies. As part of his anti-criminality program, Duterte sought to reinstate capital punishment, which was abolished in the Philippines in 2006, for illegal drugs, rape, murder, and robbery, among other crimes. Durterte via his allies in Congress would make two attempts to reintroduce capital punishment by law: at the start of 17th Congress (2016–2019), and in July 2020 at the height of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Both attempts failed to materialize after it was blocked in the Senate. Similarly, during the 17th Congress Duterte sought to lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) from the established 15 years because of his belief that children are being used as drug couriers by drug syndicates (Cruz, 2017). In April 2017, Duterte's allies in the House of Representatives (HOR) wanted MACR set at 9 years (Lalu, 2019). Later, in January 2019, representatives voted to lower MACR to 12 years. These two attempts, while succeeding in the HOR, were also blocked in the Senate. Thus, despite having supermajority in both houses of Congress (Cabacungan, 2016) and the overwhelming popularity of his anti-criminality program (Reuters, 2019), the Duterte government failed in realizing their legislative agenda in the death penalty and MACR issues. In both cases, the Duterte government encountered pushback from issue-based human rights coalitions that carried out campaigns to put pressure on senators to disengage from the two issues. These coalitions engaged in moral, religious, cultural, and legal discourses of the rights in question.

What types of moral ideologies did human rights coalitions use in their political contests over the death penalty and MACR with Duterte? How did such moral ideologies shape the success of some human rights movements during the Duterte presidency? This paper addresses these questions by examining the strategies and activities of issue-based human rights coalitions that mobilized against the reinstatement of death penalty and lowering MACR. I argue that coalitions that successfully impeded Duterte's anti-human rights policies on the death penalty and MACR utilized hybrid moral ideologies—discourses based on dominant interpretations of religious doctrine and/ or cultural values that align with laws that protect and promote human rights—in their strategies. This concept emerged in a context where moral ideologies have been a long-standing feature of politics and of everyday life (in the form of moral politics), and where moral politics was weaponized by Duterte in his anti-illegal drug program. Rights coalitions’ use of hybrid moral ideologies manifested in their activities toward harnessing support for their causes.

In examining human rights outcomes during the Duterte period, it must be acknowledged that there are a lot of independent variables. The most important one, I argue, is the nature of coalition building. This paper builds on Lozada and Rosser’s (2024: 227) argument that mediating coalitions—“configurations of actors that opposed, supported, or disengaged from efforts by Duterte and his allies to undermine civil rights”—were the key determinants to the Duterte government's varied outcomes on human rights. They argued that the unity of coalitions and support from oligarchic elites in specific rights issues shaped positive human rights outcomes (see also, Lozada, 2024 on the issue of press freedom and Lozada, forthcoming on the issue of death penalty). Adopting this position, this paper delves deeper into the underlying ideologies that shaped such coalitions.

Before beginning, some nuances must be made. First, the findings presented in this paper only apply to the death penalty and MACR issues. Certainly, there were other right-related legislation that were contested by rights coalitions during the Duterte period (for instance, the Anti-Terrorism Act) that did not result into positive human rights outcomes. The political dynamics around these other issues—and whether the Duterte government prioritized some anti-human rights legislation more than others—are beyond the scope of this paper. Second, the rights coalitions presented are focused primarily on either the death penalty or MACR (and children's rights). This differentiates them from other rights coalitions during the Duterte period that contested all his government's rights abuses. Lastly, it must be noted that these two are not the only rights coalitions that mobilized against the death penalty and MACR. For instance, leftist parties contested most of Duterte's anti-human rights policies. The choice of focusing on only these two rights coalitions is due to time and logistical constraints.

I begin with a review of how morality has been theorized in politics, and how moral ideologies shape social movements. I then provide an analysis of how moral ideologies have persisted in Philippine politics and daily life, and the moral entrepreneurs that have promoted these. The two coalitions involved in contesting the death penalty and MACR issues are then presented vis-à-vis the bases of their hybrid moral ideologies, and how they used these in their strategies for harnessing support from elites and the public. I conclude with the conceptual and practical implications of my analysis.

Morality Politics, Moral Ideologies, and Hybrid Moral Ideologies

The influence of moral issues and ideologies on politics have long been examined. Earlier research in the US used the term morality politics to define the study of moral issues and ideologies in political contests. Doan (2014), providing a historical examination of the development of morality politics as a field, argued that it is defined by three key characteristics: intractability, simplicity, and salience. Morality politics are intractable because they “involve conflicts over individual belief systems that ascribe to opposing views of what is morally acceptable and unacceptable” and they are simple in that “elementary and non-technical language is relied upon in morality issues” (Doan, 2014: 763). Morality politics are also highly salient because “morality policies tend to simulate higher levels of participation” (Doan, 2014: 765). However, morality politics remains conceptually ambiguous because there is no single agreed-upon definition of the term. Most scholars use Haider-Markel and Meier’s (1996: 333) definition from their analysis of LGBT rights in the US: When there is “at least one advocacy coalition involved [that] has portrayed the issue as one of morality or sin and used moral arguments in its policy advocacy”. Smith (1999: 725) argued that whether morality politics are regulatory (e.g. using legal means to place standards of behavior) or redistributive (e.g. a segment of society imposing its values to the rest), they share the fundamental character of “a struggle between groups to get government to legitimate one set of values and outlaw another.”

An important stream of analyses using morality politics, for the purpose of this paper, is that which examines how moral ideologies influence politics. For instance, Lakoff (2016) showed that conservatives and liberals in the US have two diverse conceptions of morality, which shape their ideological positions and their political activities. Outside the US context, scholars have examined the influence of moral ideologies ¹ on democratic movements. On one side of the debate, critics argue that using moral ideologies as the basis of social movements tend to erode democratic engagement. In analyzing social accountability coalitions ² in Southeast Asia, for example, Rodan and Hughes (2012: 370) argued that moral ideological accountability (that is, understandings of accountability based on moral ideology) “blurs the distinction between public and private spheres of conduct and subjects both to a moral code based upon an externally constituted authority” (Rodan and Hughes, 2012: 370). Such external authority can take the form of “a deity or spiritual teacher … a paternalistic elite … or the dead hand of custom or the civilising impact of culture” (Rodan and Hughes, 2012: 370). Furthermore, Rodan and Hughes (2014: 183) argued that moral ideologies pose a challenge for social democracy “by dejecting critical analysis away from what social democrats may see as the root causes of accountability deficiencies […] and by favouring modes of political participation that don't routinely rely on independent, collective mass organisations.” These make moral ideologies problematic for social movements in that they can challenge or co-opt democratic movements and become captured by elites. Rodan and Hughes (2014: 184) argued that while there may be a rise in accountability coalitions in Southeast Asia, “in many instances what is unfolding is the recalibration of governance by elites to co-opt, undermine, or accommodate challenges from non-elite forces.” In some cases, moral ideologies can be weaponized by elites. For instance, Luongo (2023: 573) argued that states use “emotionally manipulative methods meant to influence their audience in attempts to justify their human rights abuses.” By weaponizing public messaging, states can manipulate moral reasoning of their citizens, eventually leading to moral disengagement regarding the human rights abuses (Luongo, 2023).

By contrast, some scholars argue that morality or moral ideologies shape most of current global political struggles, from climate change to pro-democracy issues. For this group, moral ideologies are important factors in the success of social movements because they elicit emotional responses from the public. They argue that “all movements and activists must mobilize moral outcry over injustices” (Sevelsted and Toubol, 2023: 5). Further, people who participate in social movements “are all partly driven by moral and ethical concerns related to the future of our societies” (Sevelsted and Toubol, 2023: 4). Moral ideologies then play a crucial part in social movements because they help “envision and practice new moral principles in anticipation of what (activists) see as necessary changes in our lifestyle and society's institutions” (Sevelsted and Toubol, 2023: 4). For instance, Toubol and Gundelach (2023: 95), in examining the Danish refugee solidarity movement, found that people's values “influence attitudinal outcomes mediated by contexts of different kinds of movement activities.” The authors argued that “participation in contentious activism of political protest and civil disobedience” relate to standards of self-transcendence and non-conformity, and lack of trust in institutions (Toubol and Gundelach, 2023: 112). In terms of participation in online activities in the Philippines during COVID-19 lockdowns, Embate (2023) argued that emotions can either be weaponized or harnessed for social causes. While the Duterte government weaponized emotions “to frame or securitise a social situation and to set standards in which behaviors can be distinguished as acceptable or not,” they also became “instrumental in mobilising individuals” toward collective action (Embate, 2023: 390).

Both sides of this debate have weaknesses. On one hand, discrediting moral ideologies as bases for social movements tend to subscribe to the elitist understanding of morality politics. They see coalitions organized around moral ideologies as being easily co-opted by elitist elements, possibly obscuring the agency of non-elite actors. On the other hand, social movements scholars tend to give too much attention to the role of emotions in movements based on moral ideologies. This obscures the political environment and structures in which movements occur. This paper contributes to this debate by introducing the concept of hybrid moral ideologies—discourses that while based on dominant interpretations of religious doctrine and/ or cultural values are aligned with human rights laws and policies—using the Philippines as a case study. This concept adopts dimensions of both sides while filling some of their weaknesses. Specifically, hybrid moral ideologies acknowledges that moral ideologies can be utilized and harnessed by non-elite elements in their mobilizations against the state. Instead of elites co-opting moral ideologies (Luongo, 2023; Rodan and Hughes, 2014, 2012), hybrid moral ideologies highlight the ability of nonelite actors to carry out strategies to harness public support and put pressure on elites to support their rights claims. In addition, moral ideologies based on religion, identity, or culture are important but should not be the only basis for the mobilizations, especially because “identity changes over time” and “values and culture are permeable” (Doan, 2014: 761). Instead, coalitions should also link these to laws that promote and protect human rights.

I argue that rights coalitions that successfully blocked Duterte's anti-human rights policies in the death penalty and MACR issues utilized hybrid moral ideologies in their efforts to harness support for their causes. Doing so allowed these issue-based rights coalitions to tap into people's emotional responses, while raising awareness of and engaging the legal bases of specific rights. In other words, the coalitions’ claims started with moral ideological motivations but was backed by human rights laws. The human rights coalitions’ activities that utilized hybrid moral ideologies aimed to get support from elites and the public. Due to the overall structure of power in the Philippines, elite support is necessary to pass rights-friendly policies (Lozada and Rosser, 2024). This has been shown in the areas of education and reproductive health (Takagi, 2017), mining (Lansang, 2011), and capital punishment (Kim, 2016; Lozada, forthcoming). Similarly, public support was necessary to build political pressure on the specific rights issue, especially in a context where the government's anti-human rights programs were highly popular.

Human rights provide a suitable area to hypothesize hybrid moral ideologies because there is inherent moral, legal, and political dimensions to its understandings. On one side, many scholars conceive of human rights as “natural” in the sense that they are provided by God or applicable to any human simply by virtue of being born (Shonibare, 2022). On the other, some human rights scholars and activists have often understood human rights as a human creation produced “through political organization and good procedural laws” rather than naturally occurring (Dembour, 2010: 11). It views law, especially constitutional law, “as one of the prime ways to express the human rights values that have been agreed upon” (Dembour, 2010: 3). Finally, some scholars understand human rights as “fought for” in the sense that they are “rightful claims made by or on behalf of the poor, the underprivileged, and the oppressed” that “allow the status quo to be contested in favour of the oppressed” (Dembour, 2010: 3). In this conception, human rights are highly partisan and ideological because they are “demands for emancipation, for an end to domination and oppression” (Goodhart, 2013: 33). Therefore, human rights are morally indispensable, legally invested, and are the by-product of struggle. Further, the very practice of human rights combines individual agency, moral individualism, and cultural diversity (Ignatieff, 2001). It is a “language of individual empowerment” and “a tool kit that individual agents must be free to use as they see fit within the broader frame of cultural and religious beliefs they live by” (Ignatieff, 2001: 57).

Moral Ideologies in the Philippines

Hybrid moral ideologies, I argue, emerged in the Philippines because moral ideologies have been a longstanding feature of national politics, social movements, and daily life. In national politics, Thompson (2010: 7) noted that Philippine presidents who campaign as reformers “seek support because ‘I am (morally) good” and “promise to govern honestly in their name”. For instance, President Corazon Aquino (1986–1992) framed her campaign as the morally good alternative, based on strong Catholic beliefs, compared to the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. (1965–1986) (Thompson, 2010). Alternatively, President Joseph Estrada (1998–2001) was strongly condemned for his immoral acts while in office, leading to his eventual ouster (Thompson, 2014). Likewise, successful social movements have often been framed using moral ideologies. Both EDSA People Power I in 1986 ³ and EDSA People Power II in 2001 ⁴ involved support from big business and the Catholic Church that framed their demands using moral ideologies or moralist appeals like good governance (Hedman, 2006). The ouster of President Estrada in EDSA People Power II, for instance, was due to the business class, the Catholic Church, and civil society's moral judgement against his corruption scandals, womanizing, and gambling (Thompson, 2014). Lastly, moral ideologies have also influenced the everyday life of Filipinos. Introducing the term moral politics in the Philippine context, Kusaka (2017a: 257) argued that this concept “makes a non-issue of interest politics concerned with inequitable resource distribution by separating people into ‘good’ and ‘evil’, thus escalating fragmentation and exclusion.” Moral politics creates a division between civil society and the urban poor in the Philippines to an extent that the two function in two different spheres divided by “the language, education, media, and livelihood gaps that exist between the two classes” (Kusaka, 2017a: 5).

In this context, the rise of Duterte can be seen as both a continuity of the use of moral politics by presidents, as well as a shift in its use. Duterte was a populist who used moral politics in his presidential campaign (Curato, 2016). Alternatively, Duterte also weaponized moral ideologies (or moral politics) through his anticriminality campaign, in line with Luongo's (2023) argument. Kusaka (2017b: 49) described Duterte's outlaw legitimacy as “anchored on ‘social bandit-like morality’” which is “characterised by the coexistence of compassion and violence under a patriarchal boss who maintains justice outside of the law.” Thus, as part of his anit-criminality program, Duterte wanted to bring back capital punishment for drug-related crimes as a deterrent against drug use and crime (Johnson and Fernquest, 2018), and wanted to criminalize children as young as 9 years old because of his belief that they are allegedly being used as drug couriers by syndicates (see Conde, 2002). These moves by Duterte incited pushback from coalitions composed of actors that have traditionally promoted moral ideologies in the Philippines.

Broadly defined, moral entrepreneurs are actors that promote a specific set of values, and have traditionally been the elites (Doan, 2014; Smith and Tatalovich, 2003). However, in the Philippines while politicians, particularly presidents, have acted as moral entrepreneurs for specific issues, two actors have historically served as moral entrepreneurs: the Catholic Church and non-government organizations (NGOs). These actors’ positionalities and historical roles give them power to define—and tap into—the dominant interpretations of religious doctrine and cultural values. First, because up to 85 per cent Filipinos identify as Catholics, the Church has kept its dominance by co-opting “key instrumentalities of the state, and sections of associational life for five decades to advance its own position … while depicting itself as an agent of democratisation” (Leviste, 2016: 17). The Church has been known to mobilize against issues that do not align with its religious doctrine. For instance, the Reproductive Health Act of 2012 faced pushback from the Catholic Church, because they saw it as promoting “a mentality of promiscuity, which may well lead to the naturalization of extramarital sexual relations and eventually, abortions” (Bautista, 2010: 50). However, it must be noted that the Catholic Church no longer holds the same influence and political capital they did as in after the 1986 EDSA People Power (Bello, 2017). Thompson (2008: 386) points to two reasons: the death of the charismatic Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin ⁵ in 2005 that divided the church hierarchy, and the various sex and corruption scandals that have “eroded the church’s standing as a moral guardian.” The church’s opposition to the Reproductive Health Act also eroded their public support given the “discordance between Church proclamations regarding faith-based sexual morality […] and popular opinion and actual practices under difficult economic and social circumstances” (Bautista, 2010: 29). More importantly, the Catholic Church was divided and largely silent in the early years of the Duterte presidency. This “very deep crisis of credibility,” Bello (2017: 33) noted, resulted in the Church’s self-censorship and delayed response to the war on drugs “just when the church’s moral leadership was needed most.”

Second, NGOs have also served as moral entrepreneurs, albeit their interest in doing so do not necessarily come from religious doctrine but a commitment to social reform. NGOs use moral ideologies in their strategies to get varying degrees of support for their causes. Bryant (2005: 202), in examining NGOs involved in environmental struggles in the Philippines, argued that NGOs “link their names to moral issues or ‘causes’ not only out of individual or collective belief but also sensing that to do so may be a key means of organizational empowerment”. NGOs can then perform morality to gain support from partners and society at large. This comes with danger, however. Lorch (2021:89) noted that many NGOs “have entered into fluctuating alignments with diverse political elites to realise their objectives” with access to state spoils being one of multiple internal sources of conflict.

Mobilizations against the death penalty were led by a coalition linked to the Catholic Church, while those against MACR were led by a coalition of child rights NGOs. The hybrid moral ideologies that emerged in these two movements are linked. While the death penalty case seems to be more rooted in religious doctrine and the MACR case more on dominant cultural values that take a parental view of children, in practice, these two very much overlap. For instance, the Catholic Church's dominance in the Philippines over centuries has shaped cultural family values. Thus, dominant religious doctrines and cultural values inform, complement and strengthen each other.

Data on both cases are based on fieldwork ⁶ in the Philippines from July to December 2022. I conducted multiple interviews with civil society actors, religious leaders, human rights defenders, journalists, government officials, and politicians regarding these two issues, and reviewed considerable public and internal documents related to these cases. To identify potential research participants, the main criteria was their involvement in resistance against—or response to, in the case of government officials—both issues. All interviewees were initially identified based on publicly available information (e.g. news reports) and my professional networks. Afterwards, I utilized snowball sampling, asking interviewees for their interview recommendations and for internal documents (e.g. manuals, reports, meeting minutes) that supported their claims.

Catholic Doctrine, the Right to Life, and Death Penalty ⁷ Mobilizations

Capital punishment has already been abolished twice in the Philippines (see Kim, 2016). The first was through the adoption of the 1987 Constitution after the downfall of Marcos Sr. In making this move, the Philippines became the first country in Asia to abolish the death penalty (CHR and Labucay, 2020). However, while the 1987 Constitution prohibited capital punishment, it gave provisions for Congress to reintroduce it should they deem it necessary. In 1993, a series of high profile, heinous crimes pressured then President Fidel Ramos with the need to appear tough on crime, and subsequently pass Republic Act 7659 in 1993. The second abolition happened in 2006 after more than a decade of lobbying efforts and legal challenges by CADP ⁸ . Their efforts proved successful when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed Republic Act 9346 (RA 9346) in June 2006. In 2007, the Philippines ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, further solidifying the country's commitment to abolishing capital punishment. Then came Duterte, who wanted to pass new legislation that would reinstate capital punishment for drug-related crimes. Duterte's allies made two attempts to pass a death penalty bill. The first was during the 17th Congress (2016–2019). In his acceptance speech as HOR Speaker on 25 July 2016, Representative Pantaleon Alvarez, a key Duterte ally, identified the death penalty as a legislative priority. He subsequently filed House Bill 01: The Death Penalty Bill for drug-related crimes in the HOR. By 29 November 2016, the HOR Sub-Committee on Judicial Reforms of the Committee on Justice consolidated several proposals into House Bill 4727. This overwhelmingly passed the 3rd reading on 8 March 2017 with a vote of 217–254 and one abstention (Amnesty International, 2017). The Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights and the Committee on Constitutional Amendments and Revision of Code started discussions on the death penalty bill on 7 February 2017. Even before this started, nine of the 24 senators already opposed death penalty reinstatement (Ager, 2017). CADP intensively lobbied for the remaining 10 senators whose position on death penalty remained unknown (CBCP News, 2017). By October 2017, the Senate committees decided not to bring up the bill to the floor given opposition to it. Duterte and his allies again introduced new bills seeking to reinstate the death penalty during the 18th Congress (2019–2022). Twenty-three such bills were filed across both houses by August 2020 (Jha, 2020). Again, this attempt to reintroduce capital punishment proved unsuccessful after facing pushback from CADP and other actors. These efforts were also disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic since the government had to focus its attention on pandemic response and economic recovery. In the run-up to the 2022 presidential elections, most senators who initially supported the death penalty backtracked, fearing electoral defeat for supporting a controversial bill in the face of significant resistance to it.

Duterte's legislative efforts to reinstate capital punishment failed because it faced resistance from a key issue-based rights coalition, CADP. When the death penalty was abolished in 2006, CADP focused its attention to the prison ministry and advocating for the rights of persons deprived of liberty (PDLs). By the time of Duterte's presidency in 2016, the alliance had become a loose coalition of nine members. Still, CADP was able to mount a campaign against capital punishment reinstatement. In doing so, they utilized hybrid moral ideologies as the underlying strategy for their activities to gain support from elites and the public.

CADP members are mostly Catholic religious and lay organizations like the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines—Episcopal Commission on Prison Pastoral Care (CBCP-ECPPC), the Philippine Jesuit Prison Service (PJPS), Couples for Christ, and Council of the Laity of the Philippines. It also included government agencies like the Commission on Human Rights (CHRs), and NGOs like Samahan ng mga Pamilya ng nasa Death Row (Families of those in the Death Row) (SPDR) and Preso Inc. ECPPC, the coalition's secretariat and one of the twenty-four pastoral commissions under the CBCP ⁹ , leads most of the coalition's activities. Because of the nature of its membership, CADP utilized a hybrid moral ideology that relied heavily on Catholic/Christian religious doctrine, that is, on metaphysical and charismatic sources of authority as Rodan and Hughes (2014) noted. For instance, the second article in Affirm an Option for Life: A Source Book on Death Penalty & Justice that Heals, which is one of the resource books CADP uses in its lobbying, outlines seven truths about the death penalty. These include statements like “Each person is created in God's image” and “We are called to view crime and punishment in the light of the Gospel” that CADP used as talking points (CBCP-ECPPC, 2019, p.15–24). Pope Francis’ pronouncements also allowed CADP to further capitalize on official church doctrine. On 3 October 2020, the Argentinian pontiff published his third encyclical Fratelli Tutti (All Brothers), where he called the death penalty as an extreme solution, a false answer “that do not solve the problems they are meant to solve” (Pope Francis, 2020: 255). Pope Francis (2020: 263) asserted the church position that “the death penalty is inadmissible, and the Church is firmly committed to calling for its abolition worldwide.” However, it must be noted that while in this instance, the Catholic Church's religious doctrine aligned with the liberal human rights values, this is not always the case. As mentioned, the Catholic Church has had tensions with liberal rights programs in the Philippines (Leviste, 2016; Takagi, 2017).

CADP simultaneously used human rights law to support their arguments and mobilizations. They were able to do so because they worked closely with another coalition, the Free Legal Assistance Group's (FLAG) Anti-Death Penalty Task Force, which was established in December 1993. FLAG is the oldest human rights lawyers’ association in the Philippines, organised in 1974 at the height of Martial Law. As of October 2022, FLAG was composed of eleven organizations. While CADP and FLAG have overlapping memberships (for instance, both including ECPPC, PJPS, CHR, and SPDR), FLAG's membership includes academic organizations like University of the Philippines Paralegal Volunteers Organization and De La Salle College of Law Developmental Legal Advocacy Clinic, and research organizations like NoBox Transition Philippines and DNA Analysis Laboratory.

While CADP handled the moral religious strategies of the mobilizations, FLAG carried out the legal aspects. For instance, FLAG conducted research on why capital punishment is unconstitutional and used RA 9346, the 1987 Constitution (which strengthened protections in the Bill of Rights), and the Second Optional Protocol to the ICPPR as part of its arguments. FLAG Secretary-General Maria Socorro Diokno also testified as an expert witness in various HOR committee hearings against reinstatement. The Philippines’ National Human Rights Institution, CHR, a member of both CADP and FLAG, also provided crucial support to the coalitions. For instance, former CHR commissioner Karen Gomez-Dumpit gave her expert opinion on the subject during the second push to reinstate capital punishment in August 2020, mainly using the international lens in her arguments (Gomez-Dumpit, 2020). She ¹⁰ noted: “This wouldn't be just an issue in the Philippines. This would be a global concern […] Can you imagine the reversal of a trend that's almost going universal against the death penalty? If the Philippines would be allowed to do that then it would dismantle the world order on the death penalty, on the right to life.”

The coalitions’ efforts to harness support from elites and the public show that they combined moral ideologies and legal discourses in doing so. For instance, using their legal arguments, the coalitions conducted direct lobbying by sending research materials to members of Congress, as seen in Figure 1, and participating in committee hearings. Using the high moral standing of the Catholic Church, the coalitions also carried out indirect lobbying. They asked Catholic bishops to help convince lawmakers from their geographies to not vote for the death penalty bills. One of the bishops that acceded to CADP's request was Bishop Gerardo Alminaza ¹¹ , a vocal critic of the Duterte government, of the Diocese of San Carlos in Negros Oriental province, who appealed to his local representatives in Congress to vote against the death penalty bills. The Jaro Archdiocesan Social Action Center ¹² based in Iloilo province, also implemented this activity.

Figure 1.

The Coalition Against Death Penalty Produced and Propagated These Books to Lawmakers.

Utilizing hybrid moral ideologies opened avenues for the coalitions to gain support from key elites who subscribed to such ideologies. This included former president and then representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who abolished capital punishment in the Philippines in 2006 as a gift to Pope Benedict XVI (Calica 2006). When Arroyo became HOR Speaker after a power play against Alvarez on 23 July 2018, representatives knew that any new proposed death penalty bills would not pass. Former BayanMuna representative Carlos Zarate ¹³ gave an example: “There were attempts to insert a very innocuous position/provision in the amendments to the anti-drug law. To our mind, to us anti-death penalty advocates, eventually it will restore the death penalty. That also did not pass the House. So, I think in fairness, during the time of Speaker Arroyo, that's one thing we saw: the death penalty bill is dead.” The second push for death penalty restoration happened in the 18th Congress (2019–2022) when Arroyo was no longer speaker. Without Arroyo's oversight, the bill passed the third reading in the HOR during the second regular session of the 18th Congress. It was now up to the Senate to stop the bill, which prompted Arroyo to reach out to CADP. Even when she did not have any official position, Arroyo wielded much influence among senators who owe their political careers to her presidency. In July 2021, a staff of Arroyo reached out to ECPPC Chairman Bishop Joel Baylon to discuss the issue of the death penalty. Baylon, who was wary of meeting a controversial Duterte ally, sent a priest to attend the meeting. The assigned priest, however, was outside Manila. Hence, ECPPC executive secretary Gerry Bernabe was sent to meet with the former president and speaker. Arroyo had taken a break from politics after finishing 3 terms as representative of Pampanga's 2nd congressional district and HOR Speaker, while still being a key Duterte ally. During the meeting, Arroyo and Bernabe strategized on how to best counter Duterte's push in the legislature. According to multiple interviewees, Arroyo even called some senators and convinced them to stall the death penalty bills. Bernabe ¹⁴ recalled: “She said she really does not want the death penalty to pass because it is her legacy. She will do everything in her power to have it not passed. At that time, she was not speaker anymore, but she still wielded influence even if she was not a congresswoman.”

On the other hand, public opinion on the death penalty has always been influenced by public perceptions that crimes are on the rise (for instance, see Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, 2006). By 2016, pushed by Duterte's messaging that criminality is out of control and that illegal drugs are destroying communities, public opinion showed that 74 per cent agreed to reimpose the death penalty for heinous crimes like murder, rape and selling of drugs” (CHR and Labucay, 2020: 4). Using hybrid moral ideologies allowed the coalitions to increase public support against reinstatement. For instance, Catholic priests spoke out against the death penalty in their homilies. Fr Oso in Iloilo explained: “In homilies, relative to the death penalty, we have been very vocal. The meat of the homilies […] is that life is sacred, it belongs to God, and only God has the right to take it.” The rights coalitions also ran communication campaigns. For example, in the Diocese of San Carlos in Negros Oriental, Bishop Alminaza ordered that every parish put up a sign that said “Thou shall not kill” in the local language. This was complemented by a media campaign that showed that PDLs can change. Social media campaigns particularly targeted the youth, as young Filipino digital activists use such platforms to struggle for people's rights, create interest on public concern, and disseminate information (see Agojo, et al., 2023). The impacts of these activities were evident in a Social Weather Station survey commissioned by the CHR. The study found that while “a majority (59%) of Filipinos are in favor of the death penalty being re-instated for people who were proven by the courts to have really committed heinous crimes,” if other options were presented, only 30 per cent were “for the death penalty as punishment for serious drug-related crimes” (CHR and Labucay, 2020:Aiv). This meant that the “public's opinion on the death penalty is not a clear-cut in favor or against a position” in contrast with the Duterte government's propaganda (CHR and Labucay, 2020:Aiv). Gomez-Dumpit said of the survey: “We reversed the trend. We were able to say that previous surveys that just ask 1–3 […] questions that required binary answers of yes or no, and not even qualified were inaccurate. […] At a high of maybe 7 wanting death penalty out of 10, we were able to [reduce] it to 3 out of 10 only.”

In sum, CADP and FLAG effectively utilized hybrid moral ideologies to gain support from elites and the public. In the end, Duterte's allies in Congress backtracked their support for the president's agenda, while the public gained a more nuanced understanding of the death penalty issue. When Duterte stepped down from office with capital punishment still not reinstated, CADP and FLAG knew they protected the gains of their 2006 mobilizations.

Cultural Family Values, Children's Rights, and Lowering MACR Mobilizations ¹⁵

MACR was first set in the Philippines in 1974 when President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. issued Presidential Decree No. 603. This decree defined a “youthful offender” as someone over 9 years but under 21 years at the time of the commission of the crime, effectively establishing a MACR of 9 years. Calls for the MACR to be increased emerged in the early 1990s following the Philippines’ government decision to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in August 1990, and President Ramos’s decision to reintroduce the death penalty in 1993. The latter saw minors put on the death row for committing heinous crimes. In response to these events, the Philippine Action for Youth Offenders (PAYO) was organised in 1993 to promote the cause of juvenile justice including a higher MACR. PAYO’s initial work involved trying to reverse legal decisions on minors in death row, which they succeeded in after finding evidence to prove the children’s ages when they committed crimes. As part of its campaign for a higher MACR, PAYO along with UNICEF, Consuelo Foundation, Plan International, and Save the Children created the Juvenile Justice Network Philippines (JJNP) in the early 2000s with the sole aim of securing a new juvenile justice law. JJNP’s campaign proved successful when in April 2006, President Arroyo signed into law Republic Act 9344: The Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006 (RA 9344). This law set the MACR at 15 years, as well as established the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council (JJWC) composed of various government agencies tasked “to formulate and recommend policies and strategies in consultation with children for the prevention of juvenile delinquency and the administration of justice” (RA 9344). CHR-Child Rights Center director Victoria Diaz, who coordinated JJNP's campaign, claimed that RA 9344 set high standards for child rights: “Because the law is comprehensive—from apprehension to rehabilitation—the Philippine government was commended as having one of the most comprehensive laws on juvenile justice.” At the time RA 9344 was passed, there was no clear international norm ¹⁶ around MACR. Estorninos (2017: 273) noted that the Arroyo government's decision to set the MACR at 15 years through RA9344 “was hailed as a concrete achievement in compliance with international standards.” After RA 9344 was passed, JJNP was dissolved. But the efforts to promote children's rights led to the creation of the Child Rights Network (CRN) (n.d.), an alliance of government and NGOs advocating for the passage of national laws that will protect and fulfill the rights of Filipino children. Their child rights campaigns target legislators and decision-makers in the national government. CRN helped protect the gains of RA 9344 because a year after it was passed, there were already challenges from within Congress and local governments that aimed to lower MACR below 15 years (see Gamil, 2011). CRN's efforts proved successful in that instead of lowering MACR, they were able to push for better protections for children in conflict with the law (CICL). In July 2012, President Benigno Aquino III (2010–2016) amended RA 9344 by passing Republic Act 10630, which established Bahay Pagasa (care facilities and rehabilitation centers for CICL), and required all provinces and highly urbanized cities to build, fund, and operate them.

When Duterte stepped into power, CRN had become the biggest coalition of child rights organizations in the Philippines. However, Duterte brought the political contest over MACR to a new level because it was the first time that a president wanted a lower MACR. Duterte made MACR a part of his anti-criminality campaign by tapping into the general public's fear that CICL are committing crimes knowing that they can escape accountability. The first attempt to lower MACR happened in April 2017 when Speaker Alvarez filed House Bill 02 in April 2017 to lower MACR to 9 years. By May 2017, representatives had submitted five bills to lower MACR (Cruz, 2017). The first push was disrupted by leadership changes in the HOR, when then representative Arroyo replaced Alvarez as House Speaker on 23 July 2018. This change in the speakership meant a shake-up of committee chairmanships, and changes in the priority of different pieces of legislation. The MACR bills were pushed down the legislative agenda because other priority legislations (i.e., budget deliberations, constitutional change) were being discussed. The second push happened in January 2019. The HOR Committee on Justice consolidated six bills aiming at lowering MACR into House Bill 8858 (Reganit and Cervantes, 2019). It took 5 min for the committee to approve the consolidated bill and it passed the third reading on 28 January 2019. Initially, the consolidated bill called for a MACR of 9 years but in the end, representatives agreed to set it at 12 years (Lalu, 2019). While Arroyo was consequential in blocking death penalty bills during her tenure as speaker (July 2018 to June 2019), she facilitated the passage of House Bill 8858. According to some interviewees, MACR became part of Arroyo's “political play,” in that she passed House Bill 8858 to show Duterte that she was carrying out his agenda while blocking death penalty bills. It was now up to the Senate, which needed to pass its version of the bill before Duterte can sign it into law. CRN thus mobilized to put pressure on senators supportive of the bill, and helped their senator allies employ different tactics to delay its movement through the chamber. They succeeded to this extent in that the 17th Congress ended its session on 4 June 2019 before the bill was put to a vote.

Lozada and Rosser (2024) showed how CRN played a mediating role in curtailing Duterte's agenda on MACR by presenting a unified front and by securing support from oligarchic elites on the issue. In extending their findings, the following paragraphs show how CRN utilized hybrid moral ideologies as the underlying strategies of their campaign, Children Not Criminals, allowing them to gain support from elites and the public.

CRN's campaign was influenced more by cultural values that promoted strong familial ties and instilled a sense of parental responsibility toward children (see Medina, 2015). Filipino families cultivate a very protective view of children, as well as a devotion to children's holistic growth, as evidenced for instance in parents’ actions during the COVID-19 pandemic (Sereno, 2023). This was evident in how CRN campaigners framed their mobilizations. Children Not Criminals campaign coordinator Melanie Llana ¹⁷ noted: “MACR is an issue of children […] Death penalty is an issue of adults, although it's also successful to the extent that it did not pass […] I think (our campaign is) different because you are talking about children […] There is still that sentiment that these are kids […] A lot of people still believe that children should not be in jail.” The composition of CRN explains its view toward children. Most of its 62 members as of October 2022 were NGOs and grassroots community organizations working in children's rights advocacy. Some of its members like Bahay Tuluyan and SOS Children's Villages already work with CICL and abandoned or neglected children, respectively, and as such already engage in supervisory roles toward children.

Because it was mostly composed of NGOs, CRN had expertise in the legal bases of its campaign. Of importance here are CRN members like Consuelo Zobelalger Foundation, ChildFund Philippines, and Plan International, among others, who have previously lobbied for child-friendly laws on specific issues. Most notable, however, is the Philippine Legislators’ Committee on Population and Development (PLCPD), CRN's convenor which is composed of former and current legislators from HOR and the Senate, which had extensive progressive lobbying experience. These organizations used their legislative expertise to create arguments against lowering MACR. PAYO and CRN (2016: 2), for instance, argued that while RA 9346 and RA 10630 can improve its implementation, “difficulties in implementing the law cannot be used to justify the amendment” and that there is a “lack of evidence-based information to support the moves to lower the MACR.” The coalition also used international conventions such as the Beijing Rules, UNCRC, and UN CRC General Comment 19 to back their claims. Former CHR commissioner Gomez-Dumpit noted: “Being a state party to the UNCRC, there should be no regression, no backsliding. There is also respect for higher standards […] We said that the UN CRC and the committee monitoring it in the UN does not peg a MACR […] But notice what it does not say. What it says for countries with below 15 is to raise it. For those with above 15, they say nothing. That was the average internationally.”

CRN also worked closely with PAYO, which by 2016 had become largely inactive since the passage of RA 9344, to complement its activities by introducing a religious dimension to the parental view of children. PAYO had been convened by the CBCP-ECPPC, and thus its membership included Catholic religious and religious lay organizations, child rights organizations, lawyers’ groups, government bodies and academic institutions. The more religious orientation of PAYO's leadership and membership allowed it to implement mobilizations against lowering MACR based on the Catholic Church's doctrine of the sacredness of life rather than secular notions of human rights, suggesting the overlap between religious doctrine and cultural values previously mentioned. CRN and PAYO's use of hybrid moral ideologies were evident in their efforts to harness support from elites and the public. Lozada and Rosser (2024: 239) noted how “Catholic bishops [lobbied] their respective congressional representatives to block the bill”, while legislators’ spouses were asked to lobby their partners on behalf of CRN. Members like Salinlahi and Bahay Tuluyan also mobilized their children-stakeholders to give out flowers, talk to senators, and convince them to vote down the bill. Statements of support from other CRN members also reflected these hybrid moral ideologies. For instance, the Philippine Pediatric Society (2017: 3) said regarding House Bill 02 in April 2017: “A child offending must be seen as a product of a deteriorating values system and lack of role models in a family unity. They are not the problem to be solved but a resource to harness.”

Unlike other human rights issues in the Duterte period (see Lozada, 2024 on press freedom), Duterte's push to lower MACR did not get strong public support from the beginning. In May 2017, a survey by the Social Weather Station showed that 55 per cent of Filipinos wanted to retain 15 years as the MACR, while 20 per cent wanted MACR to be 12 years, and 9 per cent wanted it to be nine years (PLCPD, 2017). Still, the Children Not Criminals campaign pushed to increase public support by utilizing hybrid moral ideologies. For instance, CRN's communication campaigns tried to elicit emotional responses from the public (ala Sevelsted and Toubol, 2023) while explaining the legal basis of the current MACR. This was particularly useful in that being “triggered” in the Philippine context became “an invitation to participate in the revolutionary moments of solidarity and compassion” (Embate, 2023: 373). Richard Dy ¹⁸ , the campaign's communication lead, explained: “We really needed to have an intensified public education. We started from dissecting the issues, people's perceptions about the issue, and how to frame this in a way that we are aware of the prevailing communication environment. Of course, we also had to appeal to the public's populist feelings, how do we win them over in this issue.” This strategy was evident in the communication materials produced by CRN. For instance, CRN published a documentary that told the story of a 13-year-old CICL, as seen in Figure 2. The same child was used in CRN's Change.Org petition against lowering MACR, as seen in Figure 3.

Figure 2.

A Screenshot of the Short Documentary ‘Tony’ Published by CRN on Facebook on 26 September 2018.

Figure 3.

A Screenshot of the Landing Page of the Children Not Criminals Campaign's Change.org Petition.

Such activities based on hybrid moral ideologies helped CRN sustain public support despite the Duterte government's continued push (PLCPD, 2017). By January 2019, a CHR commissioned survey showed that the majority of Filipinos still wanted to retain MACR at 15 years (Roxas, 2019). What this meant for the bills aiming to lower MACR was that CRN and its allies were able to put enough pressure to cause senators to disengage from the issue. CRN saw in the legislative calendar that the senators were about to go on break from 8 February to 20 May for the 2019 midterm elections. Senator Richard Gordon, who was the committee chair in charge, needed to bring the measure to the plenary and pass it. CRN's Dy explained: “Our senator allies listed themselves as interpellators. We also had tactics like they would not show up. We really had those strategies so that it would get near the break, toward the end of the 17th Congress. If we were able to derail it that time, it will have to start from scratch in the next Congress so they would have a hard time to pass the measure. We successfully delayed it. It was not pushed again.”

Conclusion

This article examined the strategies and activities of issue-based rights coalitions that resisted Duterte's push to reinstate the death penalty and to lower MACR. I argued that these coalitions utilized hybrid moral ideologies in their efforts to curb the Duterte government's legislative agenda on these two issues. Hybrid moral ideologies emerged from a context where moral ideologies are part of politics and everyday life, promoted by non-elite moral entrepreneurs like the Catholic Church and NGOs. In the death penalty issue, CADP and FLAG combined Catholic religious doctrine with legal arguments based on legal instruments like RA 9346 and the Second Optional Protocol to harness support from elites like Arroyo and to change the public's opinion on the death penalty. In the MACR issue, CRN and PAYO utilized cultural parental views toward children (and religious doctrine to some extent) in conjunction with legal instruments like RA 9344 and UN CRC General Comment 19. In doing so, they were able to influence elites to disengage from the president's agenda and to sustain public support against a lower MACR.

This analysis has conceptual and practical implications. Conceptually, it suggests a need to reassess the role of moral ideologies in social movements. Especially applied to human rights, moral ideologies cannot be dismissed as either potentially harmful to democratic engagement (Rodan and Hughes, 2014) or necessary (Sevelsted and Toubol, 2023). Instead, scholars need to examine new patterns of ideologies (and ideological coalitions) that emerge in specific contexts. Central consideration should be given to the underlying strategies undertaken by coalitions (whether intentional or otherwise), the activities these correspond to, and the impact these have on achieving their end goals. Future research can further test the concept of hybrid moral ideologies in a comparative analysis of similar country contexts. These findings also provide a more nuanced understanding of the Duterte government’s records on human rights. While it is generally accepted that the Duterte period resulted in massive human rights abuses like those in his war on drugs and in anti-human rights policies like the Anti-Terror Act (Karapatan, 2023)—and that Duterte is ultimately accountable for these actions—this paper shows there were spaces for contestation that issue-based rights coalitions were able to capture that curtailed long-term anti-human rights policies.

Practically, the analysis provides strategies that issue-based rights coalitions can adopt to secure elite and public support. The underlying prerequisite for public support is ensuring that the public understands and is sympathetic to the rights-related concerns. Making the public understand rights-related concerns entails creating awareness and education campaigns on the specific rights being challenged, while getting their sympathy entails creating strategies that give a human face to the issue. To this effect, the campaigns presented in this paper offer strategies for using hybrid moral ideologies to elicit emotional connection while also educating the public. Building support from an educated public can help generate pressure on elites to rethink opposition to rights protection or reinforce any disposition they might have in favor of specific rights, as the cases here have shown. Finally, a key strategy that rights coalitions can consider is to focus on a singular goal (i.e. opposing the passage of a law). This allows coalitions to better concentrate their efforts and resources in a focused campaign, rather than being stretched thinly across different issues.