Metro Manila, Philippines – The Bureau of Immigration has lifted the entry ban on former United Nations special rapporteur Agnès Callamard, a prominent critic of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody drug war who had been barred from entering the country since 2018.
In a letter dated Sept. 3, Immigration Commissioner Joel Anthony Viado confirmed that Callamard’s name had been removed from the derogatory system following an appeal by lawmakers to reconsider the restriction.
“We write in reference to your 11 May 2026 letter requesting this Bureau to reconsider its previous order regarding the inclusion of Ms. Agnes Paulette Solange Callamard’s name in the derogatory system of the Bureau of Immigration,” Viado said in the letter addressed to Akbayan Rep. Perci Cendaña.
The BI furnished Cendaña a copy of its Sept. 3 order lifting Callamard’s name from the BI derogatory system.
Callamard was UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions from 2016 to 2021 and repeatedly raised concerns about alleged extrajudicial killings linked to Duterte’s anti-drug campaign.
She is now secretary general of Amnesty International.
The government confirmed in a response to the United Nations in 2025 that an entry ban had been issued against Callamard in April 2018. It said the restriction was imposed because she allegedly violated the mandate of her UN office when she visited in an unofficial capacity in May 2017 without prior notice to the government.
Callamard was in Manila in 2017 to participate in an academic conference on drug-related issues. UN human rights experts later raised concerns that the ban was imposed in retaliation to her work examining alleged unlawful killings under Duterte’s drug war.
Documents cited by UN experts showed that the 2018 blacklisting order followed a request from the National Security Council seeking action against Callamard and representatives of the International Criminal Court if they attempted to enter the country to investigate the drug campaign.
Cendaña and other lawmakers subsequently sought reconsideration of the restriction in May.
House Senior Deputy Minority Leader Leila de Lima welcomed the reversal, calling it an “act of institutional integrity” and saying the decision showed government institutions could correct course.
