She is not sure when she will return.

“Better to be safe than sorry” is how she put it in a recent interview at United Nations headquarters, chuckling at herself, which she does often, even when she is talking about ghoulish things.

“It’s so lonely to be out of the country,” she said. “You’re out of your family. You don’t have your community. I don’t see my grandkids. I have eight! All those things that make one happy are not there.”

The Philippine government insists that she is on the list because she is suspected of links to banned leftist groups. Ms. Tauli-Corpuz denies it. She says the move was retaliation for her criticism of the military over the forced displacement of indigenous people in Mindanao, a conflict-ridden region in the country’s south.

And so, in a cruel twist of fate, Ms. Tauli-Corpuz has come to embody the very problem that she has been documenting as a special rapporteur: the criminalization of indigenous activists, particularly those defending their land. Indeed, that is the theme of her next report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, scheduled to be published in the summer.

“It affects her life, it puts her life at threat,” Myrna Cunningham Kain, a Nicaraguan who is also an advocate for indigenous peoples, said of Ms. Tauli-Corpuz, her friend of 30 years. “At the same time, it is a reminder of the situation that indigenous people face not only in her country, but in other countries when they defend their people and their communities.”