The authors note that the defeat of ISIS in Syria led to the fact that Islamic radicals began to look for new regions for their activities. In recent years, news of terrorist attacks began to come from ASEAN countries, in particular from the Philippines. In this state, Islamic extremists have concentrated their efforts on fomenting the long-standing conflict of the central government and the Moro people on the problem of the autonomy of the islands of Mindanao on an ethnic and confessional basis. Various methods have been applied (armed provocations, hostage-taking, terrorist acts, etc.) In the past decades, the Philippine republican authorities pursued a policy aimed at the socio-economic integration of Moro practicing Islam, but often the measures only exacerbated the hostility of the indigenous population south of the country. For example, in the 60s-80s. President F. Marcos carried out a program of resettlement of residents of the north of the country (Catholics who actively modernized family-clan economic relations of southerners - a kind of “Filipino Yankees”) to the south, creating competition for land issues and entrepreneurship that is not strong for the local population. The current president R. Duterte, on the one hand, seeks to find a peaceful compromise on the issue of autonomization of the Mindanao region, and on the other hand, uses radical methods in the fight against terrorism and drugs. In 2018, a Coordination Committee was created at the government level to monitor the fight against the financing of terrorism in the country. During the brutal “war on drugs”, their actions often went beyond the law and violated human rights. The position of the leadership of the Philippines provokes harsh criticism in those UN agencies that are concerned with the observance of human rights in the world. As a result, the authors conclude that a peaceful settlement of ethnic and confessional contradictions in the south of the Philippines will give impetus to the development of the country’s economy and reduce the level of drug addiction of the population, and joint actions of ASEAN countries in the fight against terrorism can deprive the global network of Islamic organizations of an important extremist link in the South -Eastern Asia.