United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion Irene Khan wants the government to eliminate the country's anti-insurgency task force as it is already outdated.

In a press briefing on Friday in UN House Manila in Mandaluyong City, Khan said the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict was no longer needed because the government had announced that it would start talking to communist guerrillas again after the Duterte administration paused the peace talks.

"I call upon the executive and the House of Representatives at the national level to adopt and expedite a law on the protection of human rights defenders. I have been encouraged by other initiatives like the open-government initiative that brings in civil society into the development process," Khan said as she wrapped up his visit to the Southeast Asian country.

The government established the NTF-ELCAC by Executive Order No. 70, which former president Rodrigo Duterte signed in 2018 to carry out the government's plan to put an end to the communist insurgency, which had started in 1969.

Duterte's successor, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., kept the interagency structure in place to carry out economic initiatives and grant guerrillas amnesty while maintaining military operations.

The NTF-ELCAC was repeatedly accused of red-tagging or falsely accusing journalists, human rights advocates, activists, and administration critics of having sympathies with the communist movement without offering any proof.

However, the task force repeatedly claimed that its members were merely reporting the facts and were not engaging in red-tagging.

Khan also suggested that the government should issue an executive order condemning red-tagging and that the Commission on Human Rights should move quickly to define red-tagging legally.

"The government doesn't have a policy of corruption, but the government has a policy on anti-corruption, on fighting corruption. And I have called on the government to adopt a policy fighting red-tagging," she said.

In a separate briefing on Friday, government officials said that the country is pushing for reforms within the task force instead of abolishing NTF-ELCAC, citing its role in achieving "strategic victories" against communist insurgency.

National Security Council Assistant Director General Jonathan Malaya said that Khan's recommendation, which he described as "preliminary," comes after a 10-day mission to the Philippines, where she met with various stakeholders, including government officials and human rights groups.

"During the meeting, when we discussed the status of the NTF-Elcac, we assured her that we were open for reform. We assured her that given the new tone of the current administration, there is an opportunity here for transformation," Malaya said.

"As I mentioned, given the two supervening events, the strategic victory over the New People's army, and the exploratory peace talks with the (Communist Party of the Philippines/New People's Army/National Democratic Front), it would not be proper at this time to abolish the NTF-ELCAC," Malaya added.

Malaya also mentioned that NTF-ELCAC has been the "game-changer" in our government's fight against communist terrorism, which has been around for more than five decades now.

"Now that we're winning, what signal does it send to the public, and to the international community that the Philippines, after 40,000 deaths attributed to the communist insurgency, after trillions of dollars and pesos impact on the Philippine economy, they are not calling for the NTF-ELCAC," he said.