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Summary and Recommendations

Buod at Rekomendasyon

“Our Happy Family Is Gone”

Impact of the “War on Drugs” on Children in the Philippines

Jennifer M. drew this using pencil and crayon as part of her therapy  for the psychological distress she suffered after witnessing the killing of her father by police officers inside their Quezon City home in December 2016. © 2016 Kiri Dalena for Human Rights Watch

Thousands of people in the Philippines have been killed since President Rodrigo Duterte launched his “war on drugs” on June 30, 2016, the day he took office. Among those who died have been dozens of children under age 18 who were either specifically targeted or were inadvertently shot during anti-drug raids, what authorities have called “collateral damage.” Philippine children’s rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) put the total number of child fatalities at 101 from July 2016 through December 2018, both targeted and killed as bystanders. More deaths of children have been reported in the media in 2019 and 2020.

More broadly, official figures from the Philippine National Police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency put the number of “drug war” casualties at 5,601 deaths as of January 31, 2020. In virtually every case, police claimed they killed a drug seller or user during a raid after the suspect resisted arrest and fought back. The national Commission on Human Rights and domestic human rights groups believe many thousands more – estimated at more than 27,000 – have been killed by the police, agents of the police, or unidentified assailants.

The overwhelming majority of these killings have not been properly investigated. According to the Philippine Department of Justice in January 2019, just 76 deaths have led to investigations. Even then, only 33 resulted in court cases and 5 were pending before the Office of the Prosecutor, while the prosecutor dismissed half – 38 cases. At time of writing, only one case – the killing of 17-year-old Kian delos Santos by three police officers in August 2017, which happened to be captured on video – has resulted in a trial and conviction.

Human Rights Watch also investigated the killings of adults in which police showed little to no regard for the safety and welfare of children, often conducting raids in the middle of the night while the entire family was at home. In many raids, children witnessed the killing of a parent, or were present while their parent was dragged away and shot.                                             

The harmful consequences for children of Duterte’s anti-drug campaign go beyond the immediate violence of the raids. Many suffer psychological distress after witnessing the killing of a loved one. Some children have had to leave their homes and community, either going into hiding or relocating because they and their family members feared for their lives.

At school and in their own communities, some experienced bullying because of the stigma of alleged drug use by a now deceased parent. Human Rights Watch met one 5-year-old boy who developed aggressive and violent behavior after his father’s gruesome killing. A number of children have stopped going to school because they no longer had enough money for transportation, food, and school supplies.

The loss of a parent who is the main breadwinner can plunge an already impoverished family into even more extreme poverty. Many children are left with no choice but to work, and some end up homeless and living in the streets, further exposing themselves to danger, violence, and criminal activity.

The Philippine government, apart from its refusal to effectively and impartially investigate the killings and its policy of detaining children in conflict with the law, has done little to address the needs of children directly affected by the anti-drug campaign. The Department of Social Welfare and Development, the main government agency responsible for the welfare of children, does not have a specific program directly aimed at addressing the needs of children affected by the “drug war.” Whatever assistance the department gives children and families is derived from existing programs, such as cash assistance for burial expenses or its conditional cash transfer program.

Families have been wary about approaching the government for help because they consider the police and other government officials to be responsible for the loss they have suffered. This leaves the children and their families left with only programs supported by civic and nongovernmental groups, particularly those from the Roman Catholic Church and a few Protestant and ecumenical groups. In some communities where violence is frequent, parish priests and lay workers have been leading the effort to help by providing psycho-social (mental health) support, economic assistance, support for children to attend school, and help in finding and supporting livelihoods for affected families. But as the killings continue, such voluntary efforts have been overwhelmed and are insufficient to address the needs of affected children.

Human Rights Watch believes governments should ensure respect for human rights in their policies and practices on the use, possession, production, and distribution of drugs. We oppose the criminalization of the personal use of drugs and the possession of drugs for personal use. To deter, prevent, and remedy the harmful use of drugs, governments should rely on non-penal regulatory and public health approaches that do not violate human rights. 

Human Rights Watch calls on the Philippine government to end its abusive anti-drug campaign and investigate and prosecute those responsible for killings and other human rights violations. The UN Human Rights Council should establish an independent international investigative mechanism into extrajudicial killings and other violations committed in the context of the “war on drugs” since June 2016. The families of victims of unlawful killings by government officials and their agents should be promptly and fairly compensated for their loss. Government agencies should address the dire needs of children whose breadwinner has been killed, especially those living in impoverished communities across the Philippines where the killings typically take place, and ensure the government adopts measures to protect affected children from abuse.   

Methodology

This report is based primarily on in-person interviews that Human Rights Watch carried out between March 2018 and February 2020 in Manila, Caloocan City, Quezon City, Cebu City, General Santos City, and Quezon province. In all, we interviewed 49 people – 10 children; 23 parents, relatives, or guardians of those children; and 16 individuals from nongovernmental organizations and government offices – to obtain information on 23 deaths in which the victim of a “drug war” killing left behind children. Several NGOs assisted in identifying cases and tracking down the families of victims. Human Rights Watch focused on incidents in which a child dependent was left behind and benefited from the assistance of community organizations working with children.

When possible, Human Rights Watch conducted the interviews in a private and safe setting, without the presence of others. Several interviews with children were done in the presence of a parent or guardian. In five cases in which the interview subjects agreed in advance, the interviews were conducted in front of a Human Rights Watch video crew. Interviews were conducted mainly in Tagalog but also in Visayan and English. The interviewees were not compensated but Human Rights Watch paid travel and food expenses when, for security reasons, we interviewed them some distance from their homes.

Except in cases already well publicized, the names of children, parents, and guardians in this report have been changed to protect their privacy and prevent possible retaliation.

I. Background

Since taking office on June 30, 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte has consistently delivered on his campaign promise to kill drug users and dealers. [1] In the four years since his inauguration, police have killed 5,601 persons in what authorities called “legitimate anti-drug operations” during which the suspects allegedly fought back ( nanlaban ), forcing police officers to shoot them. [2] This official death toll from the Philippine National Police (PNP) does not, however, include the thousands more across the country killed by unidentified gunmen, which the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) estimated to be more than 27,000. [3]

Research by Human Rights Watch and others has found many of these killings were perpetrated by law enforcement personnel in civilian clothes or members of so-called death squads working with the police or local government officials. [4] In many cases, the police have planted evidence such as drugs and weapons on bodies to justify their “nanlaban” claims. [5] In other cases, the police allegedly have outsourced the killings to armed vigilante groups. [6]

While the daily number of killings has declined somewhat since the carnage of the first year of the campaign in 2016-2017, killings still occur on a frequent basis. [7] In the early stages of the campaign, killings were concentrated in the cities comprising the sprawling Metro Manila area, with its vast impoverished neighborhoods where the drug raids usually occur. However, more recently, the violence has expanded to adjacent provinces such as Laguna, Cavite, and Bulacan. [8] The killings have also worsened in other urban areas, particularly in the central Philippine province of Cebu. [9]

President Duterte has sanctioned [10] and encouraged [11] the killings. In speech after speech, Duterte has ordered the police to kill drug suspects, and even to plant evidence during raids. [12] He has promised the police cash rewards and promotions for killing drug suspects. [13] Officials who have followed his orders have later secured plum positions in government, among them Ronald dela Rosa, his first Philippine National Police chief whom Duterte strongly supported in his ultimately successful run for a Senate seat in May 2019. [14] Duterte also promised police officers impunity for rights abuses, stating he would protect them, and ultimately pardon them, if ever they are convicted for enforcing his anti-drug policies. [15]

There has been virtually no accountability for killings associated with the “drug war.” At time of writing, police officers implicated in the killings have been convicted in only one case. [16] According to the Department of Justice, only 33 cases out of the 76 it investigated in 2018 have resulted in charges filed against police officers. [17] The PNP claims it has disciplined hundreds of police officers, but this claim is misleading because most of those are administrative cases, not criminal, and many involve infractions that are not related to the anti-drug campaign. [18]

Police have not only failed to investigate these deaths in an independent and impartial manner, but in some instances have actively frustrated other efforts to gather information on the killings. The CHR has complained the PNP routinely refuses to provide copies of police documents so that it can investigate cases, [19] prompting the CHR to seek a dialogue with the PNP. [20] Litigants in criminal cases filed against police officers have likewise been turned away by the PNP, forcing them to seek intervention by the Supreme Court, which ordered the police to turn over tens of thousands of documents in a 2019 ruling. [21] The police eventually gave documents to the litigants, who called them “rubbish because most of it were cases not related to the ‘drug war.’” [22] Journalists have likewise complained that police have ignored their requests for official police documents of drug raids, which are supposed to be public records. [23]

The administration itself has resisted calls for accountability. President Duterte launched a vilification campaign from the very beginning of his presidency against those who criticized the “drug war,” including those from international agencies and foreign countries. [24] His government attacked then-United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein for criticizing this vilification of critics campaign. [25] Duterte threatened to literally slap Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, for commenting on the killings. [26] In March 2018, Duterte ordered the withdrawal of the country from the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court after the court’s Office of the Prosecutor announced that it would launch a preliminary examination of the complaints filed against Duterte. [27] In June 2019, the government launched a sustained disinformation campaign against UN Human Rights Council members countries that were considering whether to pass a resolution critical of the human rights situation in the Philippines. [28]

Domestic civil society organizations and human rights defenders have likewise been targeted with threats by President Duterte, police, and other public officials. [29] Critics of the government have been accused of supporting communist rebels, an allegation that can prove fatal in the Philippines because of military, police, and vigilante violence. [30] In some cases, the government has brought inflammatory charges against activist groups, alleging illegal possession of firearms, for example, in actions apparently designed to harass, intimidate, and ultimately silence them. [31] The government’s Securities and Exchange Commission issued a memorandum in November 2018 tightening regulations on NGOs who receive funding from foreign governments or entities, an attempt to obstruct funding to organizations critical of the Duterte administration. [32]

The administration has also targeted the political opposition. [33] In February 2017, police arrested on fabricated charges Senator Leila de Lima,  who, at time of writing, remains in detention at the police headquarters in Quezon City. [34] De Lima had earlier launched a Senate investigation into the anti-drug campaign and, as a consequence, was subjected to harassment by Duterte and his allies in Congress – including many misogynistic verbal attacks [35]  – before being detained. [36] Government prosecutors eventually brought non-bailable charges of collusion with drug syndicates against de Lima while she was secretary of justice. [37]

When she was chairperson of the CHR from 2008 to 2010, de Lima was the first – and so far the only – public official who investigated Duterte for the death squad killings in Davao City, where Duterte was mayor for more than two decades. [38] Duterte vowed to destroy de Lima as a result of that investigation, calling her an “immoral woman.” [39]

Other political opposition figures, such as Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, also face various retaliatory legal cases as a result of their critical stance against the administration. [40] At time of writing, Trillanes is facing incitement to sedition and kidnapping charges. [41]

Journalists and media outlets who have reported critically on the “war on drugs” have also faced harassment both on social media and from the government. The government’s prime target in the media has been the news website Rappler, which has frequently reported critically on the anti-drug campaign, including groundbreaking reports on the involvement of the police in the killings. [42] Rappler’s owners, editors, and journalists face numerous legal cases, and police have arrested its editor, Maria Ressa. [43] Ressa has also been targeted by a withering demonization campaign on social media. [44]

In July 2019, the government ramped up its campaign against critics of the violence, accusing members of the political opposition, human rights advocates, and Catholic bishops and priests of incitement to sedition, among other charges. [45] The inclusion of religious figures among those accused signifies the government’s increased hostility toward the Catholic Church, and to church leaders and priests who have become increasingly vocal in their opposition to the violence. [46] Much of the church’s criticism springs from the experiences of priests in communities as they go about their ministerial work. [47]

The vast majority of the killings have occurred in impoverished communities, prompting accusations that, more than anything else, the “drug war” is a war against the poor. [48] In many cases, the victim has been the breadwinner for a low-income family and their death drives the family even deeper into poverty. “These people are often the most marginalized members of our society and the ‘drug war’ violence has marginalized them even more,” said Father Danilo Pilario, dean of the School of Theology at Saint Vincent’s College in Quezon City, who also runs the Project Support for Orphans and Widows (Project SOW) that provides assistance to victims of the violence. [49]

Father Pilario and other community-based priests, as well as human rights defenders, children’s rights advocates, parents and guardians, and children themselves have spoken of the dire consequences for children of the killings. [50] These include psychological distress caused by witnessing the violence, economic hardships that follow loss of a breadwinner, dislocation from their homes and schools, and, when they do go to school, bullying and discrimination. [51]

The government has developed no specific programs to address these issues. A former top official from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), the main government agency mandated to care for children, told Human Rights Watch there has never been a single cabinet meeting under Duterte in which the effects of the “war on drugs” on children was discussed. [52] The official said that while some of the department’s existing assistance for indigent families can be applicable to affected families, such as assistance with burial expenses, the government has no program specifically aimed at addressing the needs of these children. [53]

As a result, families of “drug war” victims either receive no assistance or must seek what they can from NGOs and other civic institutions. [54] Increasingly, families have flocked to parishes whose priests have put in place interventions to provide financial assistance, vocational and livelihood support, psycho-social services such as counselling, and a safe space for them to tell their stories and share experiences with others who are sympathetic and face similar situations. [55] However, the government’s recent aggressive moves against members of the clergy, including the filing of criminal cases against some of the very same priests who help these children, threaten to take away the little help these children and their families are getting.

II. Killings of Children

On the evening of August 16, 2017, officers from the PNP dragged a teenage boy through the dark, filthy alleys of an impoverished community in Caloocan City, one of the cities that comprise Metro Manila. His body was found moments later, slumped in a corner next to a pigsty. [56] The victim was Kian delos Santos, 17, a Grade 11 student who had wanted to be a police officer one day. According to witnesses, the boy had pleaded to his assailants – one of whom held him by the neck—to stop hurting him because he had a school exam the next day. [57] They ignored his pleas and shot him three times while he was kneeling. [58]

The police maintained that delos Santos was killed in a firefight, that he was the first to fire at the police and was shot dead in the ensuing shootout. [59] This claim – like similar police nanlaban claims in many other “drug war” cases that the individual killed had been fighting back – was later debunked by witness testimony. [60]

While a number of children had died during earlier drug raids, delos Santos’s killing a year into Duterte’s anti-drug campaign was unique because of the discovery of CCTV footage showing the police officers dragging the boy through an alley that led to the spot where his body was found. Later, encouraged by the surfacing of the CCTV footage, witnesses – delos Santos’ neighbors – started to come out to testify.

“If not for the CCTV footage, the truth about my nephew’s death may not have been known and there never would have been a case against the policemen,” Randy delos Santos told Human Rights Watch. [61] Delos Santos, 43, realized there was a government-installed CCTV camera near the site of the killing, in a neighborhood called Barangay 160 in Caloocan City. He immediately asked village officials for a copy of the footage and, according to him, gave a copy to ABS-CBN, the country’s largest broadcast network. [62] He said police officers later asked village officials to delete the footage but were told that the boy’s family already had it. [63]

“What my neighbors told me about what they saw was exactly what was shown on the CCTV footage,” Delos Santos said. “It was like watching a movie being replayed.” [64]

“Kian was the sweetest and kindest boy,” his uncle said. “He was never in trouble and was never into drugs, contrary to what the police alleged.” The worst offense he had committed in school, he said, was cutting classes once. He thought that the raiding police team “used an informant during the raid and pointed at the wrong person.” [65]

More than a year later, on November 29, 2018, a Caloocan court found three police officers – Arnel Oares, Jeremias Pereda, and Jerwin Cruz – guilty of murder and sentenced them to a maximum of 40 years in prison without eligibility for parole. It was the first ever and so far, the only, criminal conviction of police officers for misconduct in the “war on drugs.” [66]

A number of the children killed had been targeted during drug raids like Kian delos Santos, but most have died simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time: they lived in the mainly impoverished communities police have typically raided in their anti-drug operations. [67] According to statistics from the Children’s Legal Rights and Development Center, nongovernmental groups that track the violence, 101 children were killed from the start of the campaign in July 2016 up through the end of 2018. [68] Several children have been killed from the beginning of 2019 up to 2020. [69] Government officials, including President Duterte, have dismissed the killing of these children as “collateral damage,” as if the anti-drug campaign were an actual armed conflict. [70]

“Drug war” killings continue to occur frequently. On the afternoon of January 27, 2020, Ronjhay Furio, an 8-year-old in Grade 3, was out in the street in Santa Ana, a Manila district to buy isaw, his favorite barbecued chicken snack, according to his relatives. [71] Four gunmen in civilian clothes and motorcycle helmets arrived riding two motorcycles about 200 meters from the boy’s house. One gunman fired a .45 caliber handgun at a group of village officials. The apparent target, councilor Roberto Cudal, 52, and another man were wounded; one bullet fatally struck Ronjhay in the abdomen across the street. “He was waiting for his food when the gunmen on motorcycles came,” said a relative. [72]

Human rights advocates helping the family of Ronjhay believe that this shooting was linked to the anti-drug campaign. But even if that was not the case, Human Rights Watch’s investigation showed how such killings can devastate a family. A relative spoke about how he was very gentle and kind to his parents and other siblings. He had already displayed a sense of responsibility around the house. After helping an uncle fix their jeepney (mini-bus) that day, he had become hungry and so fatefully decided to cross the street to buy some barbecued food. [73]

III. Psychological Distress

Children who have witnessed violence against their loved ones are among those seriously harmed by the “drug war.” [74] Human Rights Watch documented several cases in which children saw the killing of their family member or were in the house where the killing occurred. The effects on them have been profound.

Jennifer M.

Jennifer M., from Payatas, in Quezon City, was 12 years old  when her father was killed by police officers in December 2016. [75] Police, some in uniform and some in civilian clothes, entered their home and ordered all the children outside. They couldn’t pry Jennifer away from her father; she later said she was hugging him tight so that “they don’t harm him.” One of the officers finally managed to wrestle her away from her father and flung her to the ground outside. Shots rang out immediately, and seconds later, Jennifer saw her father dead on the floor. [76] Jennifer said she has nightmares since the killing, her hands often shake, she is easily startled by loud sounds, and she has become withdrawn and has difficulties eating. [77]

She said: “I was confused because I didn't understand why. Why my papa? Of all the people outside, why did they pick my father? I was angry at the policemen because my father was begging for mercy, but they didn't listen to him. That's why I was so angry.”

When asked about the killings that had become common in her community, Jennifer replied: “I can't explain it because with so many being killed here in Payatas, it's like your mind gets muddled. How else to talk about it? What goes through your mind when you remember what happened? It's like your mind is in disarray.”

Children of Renato A.

The children of Renato A., a scavenger killed in December 2016, in Mandaluyong City, has also experienced enduring psychological distress. Robert A., Renato’s eldest child, who was 15 at the time of the shooting, recalled the night his father was killed as he attended the wake of an aunt who had been shot three days earlier:

We were out to buy peanuts. My cousin and I saw four men riding two motorcycles without plate numbers, their faces covered, wearing jackets. I tried to chase them, I tried to get ahead of them. I did everything I could to reach my father first, but it was too late. I saw my father being shot. [78]

Robert said his younger brother John A., who was 13 at the time, witnessed the shooting and was wounded in the leg. Robert said of his brother:

John was more affected by my father’s death because ever since my father died, I don’t see him happy anymore. If I see him smile, it’s forced. He’s still looking for our father because he was my father’s favorite. He easily gets angry now and he lost trust in people. [79]

Karla A., the youngest child who was 10 at the time, also saw the killing, cowering in fear beneath her aunt’s coffin as the gunman fired at her father a few feet away. In tears, she told Human Rights Watch: “I was there when it happened, when my papa was shot. I saw everything, how my papa was shot. … Our happy family is gone. We don’t have anyone to call father now. We want to be with him, but we can’t anymore.” [80]

Their mother, Andrea A., said Karla was “always in a daze” after the killing:

“Sometimes, before we went to sleep, we would talk about her father, the happy things they did. Sometimes we talk about those and sometimes we would just cry. I would just tell them to go to sleep but the next day they were all still in a daze.” [81]

Children who did not directly witness the deaths of their parents also suffered. [82] Kyle R. was 5 years old when his father, Alvin R., a 39-year-old driver, turned up dead in November 2016. Unidentified assailants had wrapped his head had in packaging tape and stabbed him 19 times before dumping his body on an overpass in Tondo, an impoverished district in Manila. Kyle’s mother, Zeny R., tried to shield the boy from any news about what had happened to her husband, but Kyle learned about it from his friends. One time, Zeny said, Kyle saw his father’s picture being flashed on the TV news.

Zeny said that the boy’s demeanor has changed dramatically since then. He started behaving extremely aggressively and using foul words. During a visit in February 2019, Human Rights Watch saw Kyle pick up a skateboard and hit his mother repeatedly with it as he bounced about the living room shouting, “Putang ina mo! Putang ina mo!” – Tagalog for “your mother is a whore” – and flashing his middle finger. One time, she said, he threatened to kill a friend and wrap him with packaging tape. [83]

A crying Zeny told Human Rights Watch:

I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know how this happened…. He misses his father a lot and he takes it out on me.

I fear [what will happen] when he grows up [because] he becomes so violent…. He might turn out like the other kids who have gone astray or might be jailed. That's what I fear.

Children of Julian R.

The six young children of Julian R., 22, who was killed by motorcycle-riding gunmen in June 2017, in Batasan, Quezon City, also had difficulty adjusting to his death. “They watch news every day and they see news about killings,” Julian’s mother, Julieta R., said. [84] “It is not easy to forget it.”

Children of Hamed U.

The children of Hamed U., 29, a carpenter in General Santos City, on the southern island of Mindanao, were so upset by his death by the police in March 2018, that they asked their grandfather to demolish a part of their house that had been his room. The children, according to their grandfather Abdul U., always became sad each time they saw the room, so he had it torn down. [85]

Psycho-social Programs Offered by NGOs and the Catholic Church

Social workers and experts consulted by Human Rights Watch believe the violence many of these children have experienced has created a mental health challenge for the Philippines. [86] However, the government has adopted no specific programs for children harmed by the “drug war” to address that challenge. None of the children or parents whom Human Rights Watch interviewed had ever seen social workers from the DSWD. The burden then falls on NGOs, like children’s rights groups, or Catholic parishes to provide psycho-social programs, such as counselling.

In Payatas, Quezon City, the parish’s Project SOW has specifically included counseling as key part of its work. Father Michael Sandaga, the priest of the Ina ng Lupang Pangako parish in Payatas who helped run the program, said 35 children ages 5 or older were enrolled in the program, which meets two Saturdays each month:

The psychological aspect of the program is being taken care by psychologists, among them the priest in charge for this program, a graduate of psychology. So, he is the one taking care of all the modules and then also assessments. And then for the spiritual program, we have our Bible sharing and the personal reflections of the parents. [87]

Father Sandaga said that, based on his observations since the program started in 2016, “it was always tragic for the children.” He recounted initial encounters with boys who had turned violent because of what happened to their parents, always quarreling and fighting with other kids. [88] The girls, he said, were very shy and are scared of strangers, including priests. Some of the children, he said, tended to isolate themselves, refusing to interact with other children. These, he said, were the “manifestation of the violence that they saw.”

IV. Bullying and Stigmatization

Several days after her father was killed during a police raid in December 2016, Jennifer M., whose case is detailed above (see Section III), was interviewed by a television network about what happened. The news report identified the girl, 12 at the time, and showed her face. Her account was impactful because, by then, the Duterte’s “drug war” had only been in effect a few months, with killings happening on a daily basis. The TV report, however, meant trouble for Jennifer. She told Human Rights Watch:

I went to school after [it was shown] and my classmate told me I was a show-off. I was embarrassed. Then the teachers were also asking why I was interviewed. Of course, I didn't know what to tell them because I'm embarrassed to tell them what had happened. I tried to brush it aside. Then one day, one my classmates asked why was my father subjected to tokhang . [89] Maybe my father was using illegal drugs, he said. I said no he didn't. Then he asked me to tell him what happened. I didn't want to. He said it must be true. He was bullying me by then. He said my father was an addict. I ignored him. But the other children told my siblings that my father was an addict, that's why he was killed. [90]

Jennifer told her mother, Malou M., about what happened but she did not make much of it at first. Then finally, the month after the killing, Jennifer decided to drop out of school. Malou was disappointed but recognized that her daughter was going through a rough time. She recalled:

They were judging her and saying a lot of things about her father. Then she told me, “Ma, I don't want to go to school anymore.” I asked her, “Why is that?” She told me what was happening to her in school. So, I said, “All right, if you don't want to go to school now, then don’t. There's still next year.” It was okay for me because I wasn't there, so I didn’t know how to help her. [91]

Siblings of Jasper F.

One of the siblings of Jasper F., a 15-year-old boy killed in Bagong Silang, Quezon City, in December 2016, also faced harassment by classmates in school. He dropped out of school as a result. [92] The boy, who was in fifth grade at the time of his brother’s killing, suffered taunting by friends, his grandmother, Aida F., told Human Rights Watch. “It’s a good thing your brother died,” one friend told him one day. [93]

Children of Luciano F.

Maila F., 13, the daughter of Luciano F., a 43-year-old drug user in Payatas, Quezon City, suffered bullying after her father was killed in June 2017. “She was being harassed and taunted all the time in school because her father was killed, because he was a user,” her grandmother, Josefa F,. said. [94] “She and her young brother were crying all the time.” Soon thereafter, Maila decided to stop going to school.

Children of Lee-Ann L.

Lee-Ann L., a mother of three children whose husband was killed in March 2017, said her two daughters had been bullied in their Quezon City school, prompting her to confront the mother of one of the bullies. Although her children managed to continue schooling in the same school, it had not been easy, she said. “They are now afraid to go to school or go home. I now have to fetch them every time,” Lee-Ann said. [95]

Severe Impacts of Bullying

Father Sandaga said he encountered many cases of bullying that forced children to drop out of school. It’s part of the stigmatization that comes with being identified as a drug user or, worse, targeted by the police. “So, a child doesn’t come to school anymore because he was being bullied and was being told that his father was a drug user. He was killed because he was an addict. So the child was being humiliated,” he said. “In this community, when you lose someone, when a member of your family is killed in a drug raid, no one comes to your house for the wake. No one goes to the wake because there was a stigma on the family. Usually, wakes here would go on for more a week, sometimes two weeks, but not anymore because nobody comes.” [96]

This bullying and stigmatization has had severe impacts on families, Father Sandaga said. [97] One family was forced to leave Payatas and go back to Bohol province, in the central Philippines, because they couldn’t withstand the fear and the taunting. [98] In another case, a mother who was allegedly on a police “drug watch” list was forced to leave her children behind in the care of their grandparents. [99] “Families are also separated from each other because they needed to move out one member of the family,” Father Sandaga said.

V. Deepening Poverty

The killing of a parent or guardian typically has significant financial consequences for those left behind, especially because most victims have been from impoverished communities, and were often the family’s main or sole breadwinner. Economic impacts of this loss include inability to pay for food, school supplies, and public transport to school. The new dire economic circumstances of the family have compelled some of the children to work to help make ends meet. Other children have had to leave the family to go live with relatives who could take better care of them. And some of the children have been forced by these new circumstances to stop going to school altogether.

One evening in March 2017, Jonathan L., 35, a bus driver who drove 24-hour shifts, was waiting in a street in Quezon City for another driver to deliver the jeepney, or minibus, that he was going to drive the next day. Two gunmen on motorcycles and wearing balaclavas sidled up to him. One of them shot him point-blank, killing him on the spot. Jonathan left behind a wife and three children – two in high school, one in elementary school. Driving the jeepney had been his main source of income. [100]

As with many “drug war” victims, Jonathan had been the family’s main breadwinner. His wife, Lee-Ann L., had stopped working to take care of the children. Jonathan’s death forced Lee-Ann to move the family to live with her in-laws, which unsettled her because one of her husband’s brothers was known to be a drug user. “But I had no choice but to move in with them,” Lee-Ann told Human Rights Watch. [101]

Lee-Ann’s in-laws were also poor, so she went looking for work, finally finding a job in the kitchen staff at a school canteen. Even with the job, Lee-Ann had difficulty making ends meet. “While the kids remained in school, they no longer had the usual support that they received from their father. I have not been able to pay their school fees,” Lee-Ann said. Although public education is free in the Philippines, students and pupils still need to pay expenses like transportation and class projects.

Other families of victims had similar stories. Malou M., the wife of Benigno M. who was shot dead in Payatas, Quezon City, in December 2016, said she and her family had been driven deeper into poverty after Benigno’s death:

It's hard because you don't know how you're going to start, how you're going to fend for your children, how you're going to send them to school, and how you’re going to pay for their daily expenses and their meals. There are times they can't go to school because they don't have school allowance. We lost our tap water because we can't pay the water bill, and electricity and many more things. [102]

Some surviving parents manage to get assistance from NGOs who help victims while others seek help from their parishes. Malou was able to find work at the Project SOW in Quezon City, where she worked as a tailor after her husband died. Even then, she said, the income was hardly adequate:

It’s really not enough because it's hard to budget 250 pesos (about US$5) a day. Sometimes, I won't even earn that much in a day if you cannot make the quota of 250 pieces daily, in which case you only get paid 150 pesos. But how about the children's school allowance? They're four, all attending school. How about the food? They often just make do with eggs. Sometimes, they don't have food when I leave them at home. [103]

All of the victim’s families interviewed by Human Rights Watch suffered economic difficulty as a result of the death of their loved one.

Family of Jasper S.

Jasper S., 37, was killed in September 2017, when two masked men on a motorcycle shot him in broad daylight in Mabuhay, a suburb of General Santos City, on his way home from a volleyball game with friends. His father, Ben S., said one of the men shot him twice. “He was not into drugs, he was not in the drug watch list,” Ben said. “We do not know why he was killed.” [104]

The death of Jasper, who worked at a computer store and was supporting his six nephews and nieces, left his family economically devastated. “[His death] is a huge loss to us emotionally, economically,” Ben said, who supports his children and grandchildren by selling snacks in front of their home.

Family of Renato A.

The family of Renato A., a scavenger murdered in December 2016 in Mandaluyong City, has faced extreme difficulties since his death. All three of his children – ages 13, 10, and 1 at the time of his killing – stopped going to school and, since their mother remarried, live in the streets of Mandaluyong, taking odd jobs, such as watching parked cars and teaching hip-hop dance in order to survive. On some days, they sleep in the homes of friends and cousins, but they mostly spend their nights at the back of a local supermarket, sleeping on mats of cardboard and hammocks tied underneath a storage building.

“We couldn’t afford it so we decided to stop going to school,” said Robert A., the eldest of Renato’s children. [105] Robert said their most significant expenses were the public transportation fare to and from school, which can be as little as 15 pesos ($0.30), and lunch, typically 50 pesos ($1) per day. To support his siblings, Robert tried to work as a garbage collector but found the job too taxing on his health. Now 19, he teaches hip-hop dance to teenagers in Mandaluyong City but is barely able to support the needs of his siblings. “We make do with my salary so that my siblings and I can eat three times a day,” he said, adding:

I had to work harder when my father died. I became a father to my siblings because I don’t want to see them suffer… so I’m doing everything I can. I force myself to work even if I don’t want to. I force myself for me, for my siblings. [106]

We sleep near Marketplace beside the stall. We lay cartons around 9 p.m. at the side of the stall. We sleep there until morning. And then when we wake up, we transfer to the parking lot. We spend the night there. [107]

Children of Lorenzo M.

Melanie M. was 12 when her father, Lorenzo M., a 38-year-old worker at a canning factory in General Santos City, was shot dead by the police in July 2017. After Lorenzo’s death, Melanie and her two other siblings were forced to stop schooling because money ran dry – they had relied solely on Lorenzo’s income because their mother had no job at the time of the killing. To support her mother, who sells peanuts and washes clothes for a living, Melanie also started selling boiled peanuts in the streets of General Santos, often well into the evening. [108]

Children of Antonio S.

The five young children of Antonio S., a 45-year-old small business owner in Bagong Silang, an impoverished community in Quezon City, have suffered from psychological distress and extreme poverty since his killing by the police in August 2017, with the children often skipping meals. Their mother, Anita S., has had difficulty finding work or income because she’s preoccupied with taking care of her children and has had no one to entrust them to. [109]

Family of Sixto M.

Sixto M., 26, from Payatas, Quezon City, used to regularly buy hypertension medicines for his father, Democrito M. Since Sixto was killed in 2017, Democrito has had trouble acquiring the medicines because he lacks the money to purchase them. Sixto’s mother, Ambrosia M., now takes care of Sixto’s children, whom he had supported when he was employed as a construction worker. Since Ambrosia herself does not have a regular income, she was forced to ask one of her relatives to adopt one of the children. The separation involved sending the child to live in a province outside of Manila. [110]

Family of Felixberto D.

For a wife and mother like Filomena D., it has been particularly difficult because she has six young children at home and had depended entirely on the earnings of her husband, Felixberto D., a 48-year-old seller of pillows and beddings in Labugon village, Cebu City. He was shot dead in the presence of his children by the police during a raid on June 27, 2018. Filomena said:

They came almost at midnight, when we were asleep. People in civilian clothes accompanied by police officers with long firearms. I was in the living room, the children and Felixberto were upstairs. They took him and asked about another person, Junjun, my eldest child. My husband told them Junjun was our son and that for them to take him instead of him [Junjun]. He went on his knees and pleaded but he was shot three times in the chest and three more times in the back…. How do we restart our lives now? [111]

Community-Based Support Systems

These difficulties suffered by families of victims are a reality that supporters like Father Danilo Pilario have had to grapple with since the killings began. “The first need that we have been responding to is economic,” he said.

It’s a need that Father Pilario’s Project SOW tries to meet mainly through the livelihood center it established in Payatas. The center not only supports the children of victims but also provides livelihood to mothers and relatives of victims, many of whom work as tailors at the center just across the street from the parish church in the community. The mostly women workers make bags and other household items such as potholders that they sell. Workers like Malou typically earn 250 pesos (about $5) a day. The income is inadequate, but earning money is not the only mission of the center, which also provides psycho-social services to children affected by the violence. Other parishes in many parts of Metro Manila have similar projects.

VI. In-depth Personal Stories

Children of benigno m. [112].

In a small, dilapidated house in Payatas, near Quezon City’s mountain of garbage, Jennifer M. stared longingly at the blue couch that had been her father’s favorite spot. Her father, Benigno M., was on the couch when police shot him dead during a drug sweep of the neighborhood in December 2016. The police claimed Benigno was a drug dealer and resisted arrest.

Jennifer has a different version. She said about seven men in civilian clothes barged into their small home that day, looking for Benigno. The men ordered everybody out. But Jennifer clung to her father, hugging him as he sat on the sofa, and held up his work ID for the police to see.

“ He was told to lie face down, but he held his ID up behind him. All the while, one of the men had a gun to his head,” Jennifer recalled. Benigno kept begging. “Sir, if I committed a crime, please have mercy, please don't kill me. If you want, you can just detain me. Because of my poor children, they are seven. What happens to them, who will take care of them?” a crying Benigno told the men, according to Jennifer’s mother Belinda M. [113] Jennifer said she tried to shield her father by hugging him and covering him with her small body.

One of the men – “the big one,” she said – grabbed Jennifer, who was 12 at the time, and threw her to the floor just outside the door of the living room. One of her siblings caught her, breaking her fall onto the dirty concrete floor. The men ordered everyone but Benigno to leave the house; on her way out, Jennifer saw her father continue to beg for his life. Moments later, when Jennifer and all the others were in the small alley outside the house, three gunshots rang out.

Uniformed police officers arrived minutes later; the men in civilian clothes were still inside Jennifer’s home. When the medics came, Jennifer strained to look inside and saw blood all over the floor, her father now lying face up beside the couch. “That’s when I saw the gun beside his hand,” Jennifer said. She said her father did not have a gun, that she never saw one in their home. Police say they shot him because he fought back. They claim they found a sachet of shabu , Filipino slang for methamphetamine or crystal meth, on Benigno ’s body.

Witnessing what happened to her father was traumatic enough for Jennifer and her family. But the consequence of his death only added to their suffering. Benigno worked in a junk shop in another district of Manila and was the family breadwinner. He was only home the day he was killed because it was the birthday of another daughter.

Since Benigno’s death, there have been days the children have had nothing to eat. They rely mainly on the generosity of their grandmother, who agreed to take care of them. Jennifer’s mother was in jail for a drug-related case at the time of the killing but has since reunited with her children. After a TV station interviewed Jennifer, exposing her identity in the process, classmates began bullying her in school, ridiculing her for her father’s alleged drug use, which she denied.

Jennifer still grapples with the trauma of her father’s death. There were days when the grief was so unbearable, she didn’t know what to do, she said. She became withdrawn, not just because of the bullying but also because she just wanted to keep her head down. [114] She finds comfort in the company of her siblings, staying mostly inside their ramshackle home, their giggles – and tears – drowned out by the noise of a malfunctioning electric fan.

Every now and then, the family takes a minute to pray at the image of the Holy Family tacked above the couch. There are days when Jennifer just sits all day on the couch that was punctured by one of the bullets that took her father from her. She hugs the couch, smelling the frayed and faded seat cover, imagining the man who had sat in it, remembering the father she once had.

“I am confused because I still don’t understand why. Why my Papa? Of all the people here, why did they pick my father?” Jennifer said. “I am so angry.”

During these bouts of confusion and anger, Jennifer finds refuge in doodling and drawing scenes of her family, kittens, and sad girls on her notepad or on the plywood walls of her home. But she has never been able to finish her drawings. “It's because something is missing in the drawing,” she said. “It's incomplete.”

Child of Alvin R. [115]

“Putang ina mo! Putang ina mo! Putang ina mo!”

Kyle R. was shouting as he bounced around the cramped living room of his family’s home in Delpan, Tondo – one of the poorest, most crowded and crime-prone districts of Manila –  when we visited his home in February 2018. He jabbed his middle finger in the air, shouting as he jumped around, oblivious to the perplexed reactions of the people in the room.

He picked up a skateboard and hit his mother, Zeny R., with it twice in the arm. “Putang ina mo!” he shouted. That is Tagalog for “Your mother is a whore.” [116]

Kyle’s behavior is deeply disturbing, in part because he is only 5 years old. While it might not be unusual for children his age to sometimes use foul language or act out among friends, his mother found something profoundly unsettling about the intensity of Kyle’s aggressiveness. “I don’t know what’s happening,” Zeny said, shaking her head and close to tears. “I don’t know how this happened.”

Zeny has not taken Kyle to a therapist because she cannot afford the expense. The nannies she has been able to hire so she could leave the house and go to work typically have not lasted long because of Kyle’s aggressiveness.

During a visit by Human Rights Watch in February 2019, the latest nanny, a 50-something man, displayed a remarkable calmness toward Kyle. Almost cheerfully, he bathed Kyle, changed his clothes, and helped him into his school uniform – even as Kyle grabbed a knife and chased him with it.

The presence of strangers may have emboldened Kyle to behave more aggressively, but Zeny said this was not the first time. Sometime last year, Kyle was playing with friends when it suddenly turned ugly – he threatened to kill one of his playmates, telling him he would wrap him with packaging tape.

In November 2016, Kyle’s father, Alvin R., a 39-year-old driver, disappeared. He was found dead two days later, on the Delpan overpass not far from their home. He’d been stabbed 19 times. “I’m a drug pusher. Don’t emulate me,” read a handwritten sign in Tagalog placed beside the body. Alvin's head was wrapped with packaging tape.

Alvin’s horrific death turned Zeny’s world upside down. Because he had been the breadwinner, Zeny was forced to look for a job. When she found one, she started spending less time with Kyle. And when she entered into a relationship with her current boyfriend, Kyle became even more aggressive and violent. “He's always saying that he's going to kill my partner now because maybe he's jealous because sometimes I don't have time for him anymore,” Zeny said. She fears that Kyle would remain violent into adulthood. “I want him to leave this place because he might grow up like the other kids who went astray or ended up in jail.”

The community Zeny and Kyle lived in Delpan is similar to the urban communities where many “drug war” victims lived, which is to say impoverished areas with high rates of violent crime. Zeny and her husband would fight constantly because Alvin , according to her, liked to “stay outside” and hang out with friends. “His life was really outside. Sometimes when his kid was asleep, he would sneak out. So, when he comes home, I'm mad. “Where did you go this time?’ Confrontations like that,” she said. Confrontations that Kyle would see. One time, Kyle confronted Zeny about her nagging. “You said you wished daddy would die,” the child told her.

Alvin’ s death affected Zeny’s ability to hold her family together. “I kind of punished myself when he was gone. I was drinking every day. To this day. My coworkers know that, and they ask me why since they thought I’d moved on already.”

But moving on is a challenge seeing how Kyle seemed to grow more violent each day, Zeny said. “I'm going to kill you. Knife! Give me the knife!” the boy screamed at Zeny once. [117] It’s a behavior that made it even more difficult for Zeny to take care of him. “He misses his father a lot and he takes it out on me,” she said.

Children of Renato A. [118]

The four men wearing balaclavas arrived at the funeral wake on two motorcycles. Moments later, shots rang out, sparking panic among the crowd of mourners, who fled or dove for cover. The gunmen’s apparent target, Renato A., was shot 10 times and died at the scene. His then-13-year-old son, John A., was hit in the leg; his daughter, Karla A. who was 10 at the time, cowered under a table but wasn’t physically injured in the attack. The eldest son, 15-year-old Robert A., who was right behind one of the gunmen as he fired into the crowd, also managed to escape without injury.

The wake was for Renato’s sister-in-law, Veneracion A., 39, who had been gunned down three days earlier while having dinner in front of a convenience store in an impoverished Manila neighborhood. The assailant walked up and shot her in the head in the evening of December 16, 2016. An alleged drug user whose name was on the authorities’ drug watch list, Veneracion had feared she might be a target of the government’s anti-drug campaign. [119]

Two years after the murder of their father, Renato’s children eke out an existence on the streets of Mandaluyong City in Metro Manila, abandoned by their mother, out of school, and dependent on meager wages from menial jobs and the generosity of extended family to get by.

Human Rights Watch spent time with Renato’s children and their friends and cousins one day in February 2019. They behaved like they felt at home in the streets of Mandaluyong – and, in a way, they are. Since their family’s home was demolished by the government years before, allegedly because it encroached on private property, they had been spending more time in the streets. They were familiar faces to neighbors and shop owners, and even to policemen and neighborhood watchmen.

As Karla and Robert walked around Mandaluyong that day looking for their brother John, chatting up friends and acquaintances, high-fiving jeepney drivers and street vendors, it was clear they seemed comfortable living in the bustle of the city.

When Human Rights Watch spoke to Karla, she was still upset about the time she got feverish one night that month and was all by herself in a cousin’s house. John and Robert were nowhere to be found; they had spent the night with their friends out in the streets. That night was the loneliest she felt since her father’s death, she said.

“My brothers and I were always together,” said Karla, now 12. “We were always complete. Since her father died, “a big change happened with my family,” she said, now sobbing. “I just want us to be together.” [120]

Her father’s murder shattered her family. Their mother, Andrea A., has since remarried, and practically abandoned the children, who refused to live with her because, they told Human Rights Watch, they hate their mother’s new husband. Andrea told us her decision to remarry was mainly driven by her inability to support herself, and this seems to have bred resentment among her children.

Since the killing, all three children have stopped going to school. They enrolled for a few months at one point, but eventually gave up because they were homeless. Robert found menial work with the municipal government as a trash collector but left it because he found it too taxing. These days, he earns money by teaching hip-hop to teenagers in Kalentong. John has become withdrawn since his father’s death and refuses to socialize even among friends. “He easily gets angry and he has lost trust in people. Especially when he learned that we know the man who had my father killed,” Robert said.

But Robert is confident John can take care of himself, a view Andrea shares. “They are boys, so they are okay,” she told Human Rights Watch. [121] But both worry about Karla. Andrea wanted to take Karla with her to Taytay, a town north of Manila, where the girl could live with her and her new husband. But Karla refused, afraid her mother would just turn her into the housekeeper for a friend of Andrea’s husband.

The three siblings spend their days in Kalentong, their nights in the houses of friends and cousins, and their afternoons in the parking lot behind Marketplace mall. There, they hang hammocks between delivery vans, taking naps, waiting for their friends who also live in the streets, and spending hours just chatting, gossiping with delivery drivers, and horsing around. Aren’t they afraid the men who killed their father will come back for them? “If they wanted us dead, we would have been dead a long time ago,” Robert said.

While life in Kalentong has not been easy, especially for Karla, the three have no plans to leave. Here, Robert said, “we have friends, we have each other.”

Children of Kristina D. and Diana D.

Kristina D., 27, and her sister, Diana D., 26, were very close siblings, almost like best friends. They shared many things, among them that they worked at the same job at the same beer house and restaurant in General Santos City. But most importantly, they shared a responsibility for their respective children. Both were not married but had children in past relationships; Kristina had two children, aged eight and ten, while Diana has one, aged seven. All of them lived in one hut made of bamboo on the outskirts of a city in the southern Philippines, and the children were cared for by their mother, Carmen D., when the sisters were at work.

One night in August 2017, two men arrived on a motorcycle, entered the restaurant where the sisters were working, sat down, and ordered beer. Not long after they took swigs of beer, one of the men drew a gun and aimed it at Diana, who was attending to another customer a few tables away. Kristina saw what was happening, lunged at the gunman, who fired four times and hit Kristina instead: twice in the chest, once in the knee and once in the arm. [122] The gunman kept firing even as Kristina fell to the floor, hitting Diana twice: once in the face, another in the spine. Kristina died on the spot; Diana survived but is now paralyzed from the waist down. The gunmen managed to escape on their motorcycle.

Diana did not want to go into details of why she was targeted, but she said it might have something to do with a previous side gig she did providing information to the local police about drug dealing in the city. But she was not sure whether the police or the drug syndicates were behind the attack.

When Human Rights Watch visited her on May 21, 2018, Diana was inside their hut, the cheerful Hello Kitty posters that adorned the room doing nothing to dispel the sense of helplessness inside. Dangling beneath the bed made of bamboo and coconut wood was a bag of urine from a catheter, its tube snaking up to Diana as she sat on a four-inch thick foam slab. Carmen, her 49-year-old mother, was the more emotional of the two as she narrated what had become of her grandchildren, all of whom were still in elementary school.

One of Kristina’s children now lives with his grandparents on his father’s side, far away from General Santos City. Carmen has been taking care of the other two on top of making sure that Diana’s needs are met – bathing her, inserting her catheter, and providing daily care. Despite Carmen’s best efforts, things have been extremely difficult, not least because Kristina and Diana had been the breadwinners of their extended family. As Carmen lamented: “[The children] have stopped going to school. Nobody could take proper care of them.” [123]

“We’re like beggars now, asking for help from everybody,” Diana said. But she despairs for her child, her nephew, and her niece the most. “I pity our children. What will become of them now?” she said. “All I can do as I sit here all day, in pain, is cry and pray.”

Children of Lorenzo M. [124]

A month after her father was killed, Melanie M. started going out in the streets of General Santos City, in the southern Philippines, to sell boiled peanuts. It’s a decidedly unusual – and risky – task for a small 12-year-old girl but this has become Melanie’s routine. She sets out at 9 o’clock in the morning and tries to return home by sundown, but often ends up returning well into the evening. “I go around the plaza, pleading with people to buy my peanuts,” she said.

She sometimes is accompanied her mother in selling the snack but often she is on her own, navigating the wide streets and busy highways of the city, particularly near the plaza where the traffic is the busiest. It’s hard work, Melanie said, but she hoped things would get better. “I hope to stop selling peanuts during class days and just do it during the weekends,” she said. “I intend to go back to school.”

Melanie stopped going to school after her father, Lorenzo M., a 38-year-old worker at a canning factory, was shot dead by the police in July 2017. Lorenzo’s wife, Marilyn M., said the police officers who raided her in-laws’ home in an impoverished community called Silway claimed they shot him because he fought back. [125] Melanie, who was present during the raid, rejects the police claim. [126]

Since Lorenzo’s death, his family has suffered. Not only Melanie, but also her younger brother, Kenneth M., 9, stopped going to the public elementary school. She was in Grade 4 while Kenneth was in Grade 1 at the time of their father’s death. The youngest child, Richard M., 4, recently fell ill with asthma. The mother’s earnings from selling peanuts and washing other peoples’ clothes were simply not enough.

Prior to dropping out, Melanie and Kenneth would go to school without lunch money and their teachers would take pity on them and feed them. But that arrangement did not last long and, soon after, both children stopped attending classes. Marilyn noted that other families in her community received the modest 4Ps, or conditional cash transfer program benefits, from the DSWD, but they did not. [127] She did not bother to ask why, except to say that she was ashamed and scared to ask for help from government.

Children of Hamed U. [128]

Inside the compound owned by Abdul U., a 64-year-old tricycle driver, is a small area no larger than three square meters that looks cleaner than the rest of the property, three homes made of unfinished hollow blocks and tin roofs. “That used to be my son’s room,” Abdul said, pointing a finger at the cemented floor. His son, Hamed U., 29, died during a police raid of the compound in the outskirts of General Santos City in March 2018.

Police officers in camouflage uniforms without nameplates arrived at the house shortly before 2 a.m., when everybody was asleep, took hold of Hamed, and ordered him to go out of the room. They did not show an arrest or search warrant. “They were carrying Armalite [military assault] rifles, pointing them at my son,” Abdul said. Moments later, three shots rang out; two of the bullets hit Hamed while he was seated in the next room on a wooden bench. Abdul pointed to the bullet holes at the back of the bench as he narrated what happened.

Hamed’s children were sleeping in the same room with their father when the police invaded and yanked their father into the next room and killed him. Hamed’s wife was not there because she was working in Saudi Arabia as a domestic worker at the time. “ Ama , please help me! They are going to kill me!” Hamed pleaded to his father, according to a cousin who witnessed the raid.

Hamed, a carpenter who police alleged was a drug dealer, left behind three children. Moner U., the eldest was 9 years old and a Grade 3 pupil at the time. His grandfather said he was traumatized by what happened to his father: “He would just sit and stare at my son’s picture all the time.”

When we spoke to him days after the shooting, Abdul said they had not yet figured out what to do with Hamed’s children. “They live in fear. We live in fear,” Abdul said. The fear was such that the family decided not to pursue a case against the police. “We can’t do anything,” he said.

But Abdul did do what he could. When his grandchildren started to complain that they could not bear looking at the room in the house where Hamed and his children used to stay, he had it demolished.

VII. Government Response

The Philippine government has failed to assist the children of those killed in its abusive “war on drugs.” Beyond the illegality of the killings themselves, the government has violated the fundamental rights of the children of victims.

International human rights law, to which the Philippines is party, places obligations on governments to protect children at risk. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights calls for the “widest possible protection and assistance” to the family and dependent children. [129] Moreover, “children and young persons should be protected from economic and social exploitation.” [130] The Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out a range of rights that governments must afford children. [131]

While the Philippine government has asserted that families of individuals who have died in anti-drug operations can avail themselves of programs of the DSWD – such as payment for medical and burial expenses – it doesn’t have specific programs addressing the needs of such families. [132] A former senior DSWD official told Human Rights Watch that there was no separate or specific program or plan for children orphaned in drug raids. [133] This official said that as of May 2019, the impact and effect of the “drug war” violence on children had not been raised in any Cabinet meeting. [134]

Early on, the department announced that existing programs would meet the needs of these families, but no specific programs have been created, and Human Rights Watch’s research indicates that their special needs remain unaddressed. [135]

Human Rights Watch sent letters (see Appendix) in January 2020 to the DSWD, as well as the Council for the Welfare of Children (CWC), the government agency that coordinates all efforts to protect children, and the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council (JJWC), asking about the existence of specific programs for children of the “war on drugs.” We received no response from the CWC or JJWC. The DSWD responded to our inquiry on February 20, 2020, requesting more time to reply, to which Human Rights Watch replied affirmatively on March 6, 2020. However, after that, Human Rights Watch received no further response.

Other agencies that could help victims’ families with targeted programming – such as the Department of Health – have expressed support for the anti-drug campaign. When asked about psycho-social help for family members of people who have been killed, Paulyn Jean Ubial, the Health Secretary from 2016 to 2017, said: “Why is it a public health issue? [Is it] contagious? Lifestyle-related? In the first place, is that a disease?” [136]

Even if there were programs, government agencies would need to address the deep wariness – if not outright fear – that many families and children of victims feel about approaching the government for help. [137] Clergy and children’s rights advocates with whom Human Rights Watch spoke to said that these families have been severely stigmatized and often live in fear, so that they cannot be expected to seek support from the very entity that they feel is responsible for their plight.

VIII. Recommendations

To the government of the philippines.

• Issue a presidential proclamation officially ending the “war on drugs.”
• Investigate and prosecute alleged perpetrators, including law enforcement personnel, credibly implicated in extrajudicial killings and other abuses committed during the Duterte government’s “war on drugs.”
• Promptly and fairly compensate the families of victims of unlawful killings by government officials and their agents.
• Fully cooperate with the Commission on Human Rights’ investigation of such killings, including by providing requested information on the anti-drug campaign generally and specific cases.
• Fully cooperate with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which was directed by the UN Human Rights Council in a July 2019 resolution to prepare a report on the human rights situation in the Philippines.
• Provide material assistance and targeted financial support programs to parents, appointed relatives, or legal guardians and any relevant agency responsible for the welfare of a child adversely affected by the anti-drug campaign to ensure children remain in school.
• Protect adversely affected children from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral, or social development.
• Gather information and data about the children and families affected by the anti-drug campaign, ensuring confidentiality and protection against retaliation.
• Form and provide resources for a multi-agency initiative (government, civil society, academe, faith-based organizations, and NGOs) to develop, plan, and implement programs for assistance specifically to children of “drug war” victims.
• Ensure that the department’s conditional cash transfers (4Ps benefits) reach the families of victims, and actively monitor implementation of the program to prevent any discrimination against those families.
• Ensure that all children, including those adversely affected by the anti-drug campaign, enjoy their right to free and compulsory primary education as guaranteed under the Philippines Constitution and international human rights law. Take immediate measures to ensure that no child is ever denied their right to education, including secondary education, due to school fees or related costs of education.
• Enforce anti-bullying and anti-discrimination policies, notably with respect to children adversely affected by the anti-drug campaign, inform students how they can confidentially report incidents of bullying, and specify measures to hold accountable students found responsible for bullying.
• Ensure school officials and teachers are trained and equipped to handle cases of bullying among students, and ensure school administrators ensure all staff and students abide by the government’s anti-bullying policy, and recognize that all children should be protected from bullying and harassment based on their economic circumstances or on the basis of the status or activities of the child's parents, legal guardians, or family members
• Assist the Department of Social Welfare and Development in providing mental and psycho-social health services to children of families affected by the anti-drug campaign.
• Create a partnership and coordinate with private mental health professionals and academics to ensure that adversely affected children and their families are provided adequate mental health care and support.

To the Philippine Commission on Human Rights

• Investigate the deaths of all children killed in the “war on drugs.” Publicize the results of those investigations and make specific recommendations for accountability in all cases where there is sufficient evidence for such a determination.
• Urge relevant government agencies, such as the Department of Social Welfare and Development and the Department of Education, to enforce existing laws and policies for the protection of children.

To the United Nations Country Team and UN Bodies

• Strongly advocate with the Philippines government to end government policies supporting the “war on drugs.” Call on the government to hold perpetrators of violence against children and their families accountable for rights abuses.
• The UN Human Rights Council should establish an independent international investigative mechanism into extrajudicial killings and other violations committed in the context of the “war on drugs” since June 2016.
• The UN Country Team in the Philippines should speak out publicly about the plight of adversely affected children and their families.
• UNICEF should make the children of “drug war” victims a priority in their programs and interventions, particularly on the issues of psychological distress and livelihoods. It should support a multi-agency initiative, to be led by the Department of Social Welfare and Development, to provide such intervention.
• Provide political, technical, and financial support for the Commission on Human Rights to investigate human rights violations in the “drug war.”  

To Bilateral and Multilateral Donors

• Support the creation of a multi-agency initiative that will provide specific assistance to the children affected by the anti-drug campaign.
• Consult with Philippines government agencies and independent civil society and community groups on the design of timely and effective assistance programs to benefit children adversely affected by the anti-drug campaign.
• Provide technical and financial support for assistance programs designed to support adversely affected children.
• Publicly and privately urge the government ensure support for adversely affected children and families, such as through disbursement of conditional cash transfers.

Acknowledgments

This report was researched and written by Carlos H. Conde, researcher in the Asia division. It was reviewed by Michael Bochenek, senior counsel, and Bede Sheppard, deputy director, in the Children’s Rights Division, and edited by Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director. James Ross, legal and policy director, and Joseph Saunders, deputy program director, provided legal and program review, respectively. Production assistance was provided by Racqueal Legerwood, Asia coordinator; Travis Carr, Publications coordinator; and Fitzroy Hepkins, administrative manager.

Human Rights Watch would like to thank these groups and individuals for their assistance in the research and preparation of this report, as well as the video that is accompanying it: Kiri Dalena, Bahay Tuluyan, Children’s Legal Rights and Development Center, Project Support for Orphans and Widows, Network Against Killings in the Philippines, iDefend, Arnold Janssen Kalinga Center, and Resbak.

And to the parents, relatives, guardians, friends, and children of the victims of the “drug war,” we extend our heartfelt gratitude for courageously sharing your stories with us.

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How Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’ is being significantly opposed within the Philippines

• David Lozada

When I was a journalist during the first year of Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency, I reported on a nationwide series of protests that commemorated International Human Rights Day on December 10, 2016.

Thousands took to the streets in regional centres across the Philippine archipelago, protesting the human rights abuses of the government’s so-called ‘war on drugs’ (WOD). This was one of the first major mobilisations against the WOD and it certainly wasn’t the last.

As the WOD rages on, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic , it has been opposed within the Philippines and outside it. Although international opposition has received more widespread attention in recent months, I argue that domestic contestations have to be given more significant focus, especially with the upcoming Philippine presidential elections in May 2022.

Close examination of those contesting the WOD, especially within the Philippines, is an important first step to understanding the goals, motivations, and relative effectiveness of these contestations. It also allows us to understand relationship patterns between different actors in the Philippine polity.

The bloody ‘War on Drugs’

When President Duterte came to power in June 2016, he immediately fulfilled his campaign promise to stamp out criminality by launching his bloody WOD. Duterte framed the problem of illegal drugs as crucial to the survival of the Philippine nation. Illegal drug users and peddlers were framed as dangerous ‘others ’ that threatened the safety of the Filipino people—the ‘good’ us.

The day after he was sworn in, police officers began arresting and killing alleged drug users under Operation Tokhang (which focused on urban poor slums) and Operation Double Barrel (targeting alleged drug lords). After six months, Amnesty International reported that more than 7,000 Filipinos had been killed in the WOD. The total number of drug war deaths remains contested. The official number from the Philippine National Police is 5,526 as of December 2020. However, this does not include the thousands of extra-judicial killings carried out by armed vigilantes. Domestic human rights groups have estimated the total number of WOD deaths at 27,000 as of December 2020.

The President’s actions have attracted local and international opposition. On the international side, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) prosecutor, on 14 June 2021, sought full authorisation from the tribunal to open a full investigation into the WOD. Outgoing Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said ‘there is a reasonable basis to believe that the Crime Against Humanity of Murder was committed’ in the country between July 1, 2016 and March 16, 2019 in the context of the government’s WOD. If the investigation proceeds, judges can issue summons and even arrest orders—with Duterte and his top officials being named respondents.

The UN Human Rights Council and the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) are some of the biggest international critics of the WOD. In July 2019, the UN Human Rights Council voted to set up an investigation into alleged abuses. In October 2020, however, instead of launching a comprehensive investigation, the Human Rights Council passed a resolution providing technical assistance to the Philippines on areas of accountability, data gathering of violations by the police, and a rights-based approach to drug control.

Meanwhile, the OHCHR has been critical of the WOD since reports of the abuses surfaced in 2016. The office has repeatedly asked the Philippine government to allow independent rapporteurs to investigate the WOD. In response, Duterte resorted to name-calling and threatened UN rapporteur Agnes Callamard with violence should she come to the Philippines.

Much academic attention has been given to the international consequences of the WOD under international law on genocide , the Responsibility to Protect , and possible prosecution in the ICC . On the domestic side, the media have played an important role in reporting the human rights abuses of the WOD (for example, see Rappler’s Impunity Series ). Researchers have also problematised the patterns of drug war killings , the WOD’s implications on human rights practice , and the use of police violence .

What is missing is an analysis of the contestations happening against Duterte’s WOD at the domestic level. What types of contestations are happening against the WOD locally? Who are carrying out these contestations; and are they influencing the government?

Classifying domestic contestations

I classify the various contestations, or mobilisations (ie specific movements), being carried out domestically in the WOD in three ways:

• Political mobilisations, including mass protests, local and international lobbying, and advocacy networks.
• Legal mobilisations, such as filing local cases against the WOD
• Social mobilisation, including rehabilitation programs for drug users and trauma counselling for survivors and their families.

I contextualise these contestations by using political scientist Michael Goodhart ’s understanding of human rights as political demands. Goodhart argues that human rights should be understood as ‘demands for emancipation, for an end to domination and oppression.’ In terms of power, Goodhart notes that human rights confront ‘the ideology of arbitrary power and inherited or exclusive privilege with the ideology of freedom and equality for all. This definition of human rights is most apt to understanding how human rights are mobilised and used to contest the WOD in the Philippines. Human rights as political demands also fall within the protest school of Marie-Benedicte Dembour ’s four schools of human rights. The protest school understands human rights as an avenue to redress injustices, realised through ‘a perpetual struggle.’

Furthermore, most WOD abuses and deaths are happening in urban poor areas. This has led Amnesty International and others to call the WOD a ‘war against the poor.’ I therefore use political economists Jane Hutchison and Ian Wilson ’s analysis of the urban poor in the Philippines, which acknowledges the urban poor’s agency in political participation, and in their reliance on non-government organisations for more disruptive forms of politics.

Political mobilisations: mass protests and international lobbying

Most Philippine civil society organisations including NGOs, advocacy networks and academic institutions, were active in terms of traditional protests and local and domestic lobbying as soon as the WOD abuses started. As noted earlier, Human Rights Day (December 10), has become a traditional protest day against the abuses of the WOD. Other Philippine holidays, like the February 25 commemoration of the 1986 People Power Revolution (also known as the EDSA Revolution) has also been used to criticise the WOD .

The most influential of the local actors are the Catholic Church and the Philippine Left. The Philippines is the biggest Catholic nation in Asia due to its Spanish colonial history. The Church played a key role in the ousting of the Marcos dictatorship, and, according to historian Lisandro Claudio , even co-opted the narrative of the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution. Political scientist Eva-Lotta Hedman also provided a historical analysis of the Church’s role as part of the dominant bloc of Philippine civil society, and their roles in crises of authority in Philippine politics since the 1950s.

Bishops have not only used the pulpits to condemn the WOD as ‘immoral and illegal’ acts but others have conducted more brazen acts of resistance by sheltering WOD victims . However, the Church has been an ambivalent critic of WOD, because its leadership is divided on the issue. For example, some Catholic Church leaders in Mindanao , the region from which Duterte is from, have been supportive of the WOD and others have been subdued out of fear of retribution.

Another influential actor in political contestations against the WOD is the Philippine Left, which has the most capacity among other domestic groups to mobilise protests against the Duterte administration. It should be noted that the Philippine Left is not a homogenous organisation but one with several divergent factions. The biggest split is between the ‘reaffirmists’ who adhere to the Maoist-inspired Communist movement organised by Jose Ma Sison, and the ‘rejectionists’ who broke away from Sison. The reaffirmists, also known as the national democrats, allied itself with Duterte during the early part of his presidency while the rejectionists did not.

As Emerson Sanchez and Jayson Lamchek noted, the national democratic faction’s alliance with the government meant that their criticisms of the WOD were muted, and their legitimacy was questioned by those outside their influence. When the military generals who were uncomfortable with Duterte’s alliance with the Reds finally convinced the commander-in-chief to cut ties with the government, the Philippine Left increased its mobilisation against the Duterte administration. In response, the government created the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict , which has been conducting a campaign to delegitimise the Philippine Left. The Taskforce has been accused of ‘red-tagging ’ activists and advocates, and linking them to the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Aside from mass protests, another form of domestic contestation against the WOD has been lobbying. Local groups have put more focus on lobbying international organisations to influence the Philippine state’s actions on the WOD more than on lobbying local politicians to act against the Executive. Partly this is because, given the oligarchic nature of the Philippine legislature, Duterte holds a super majority in both houses of Congress. As soon as Duterte won the polls, major political parties signed a coalition with the president’s party , PDP-Laban. The 2019 Midterm Elections further solidified Duterte’s hold on the legislative , with the opposition failing to win any of the 12 senate seats up for grabs.

Duterte has subdued many political leaders with fear. Early in his presidency, Senator Leila De Lima initiated a probe into the WOD abuses in July 2016. By August 2016, the Duterte government had named her as an illegal drug lord. She has been detained since February 2017 for alleged violations of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002. De Lima’s experience has served as a chilling example to many Filipino politicians.

On the international side, CSOs have lobbied international organisations to put pressure on the Duterte government to stop the abuses. As early as August 2016, over 300 Philippine NGOs have asked UN agencies, particularly the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, to condemn the killings. Groups such as Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights) an alliance of organisations working to promote and protect human rights in the Philippines, have also lobbied the UN Human Rights C ouncil to investigate the killings. Groups have also relied on transnational advocacy networks to pressure the Human Rights Council to act. A Human Rights Council resolution in October resulted from this lobbying, but some felt it was a missed opportunity to conduct a more rigorous investigation.

Legal mobilisations in the Supreme Court

Sociologist Cecilia MacDowell Santos defines legal mobilisation as the ‘practice of translating a perceived harm into a demand expressed as an assertion of rights,’ translated into a complaint presented to a court.

According to scholar Andrew Rosser , legal mobilisations are closely tied to justiciable legal frameworks for the protection of human rights that ‘ensure that government policies protect human rights, bureaucracies implement rights. But in developing country contexts, justiciable legal frameworks for the protection of human rights have a higher chance of succeeding when litigants have access to support structures for legal mobilisations, as in the example of education rights cases in Indonesia. In the WOD, civil society organisations can be seen as support structure to the extent that they empower victims to file cases against the government.

A leading organisation that has been helping victims file cases relating to the WOD is the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), the oldest network of human rights lawyers in the Philippines. In October 2017, FLAG petitioned the Supreme Court to declare the WOD unconstitutional on the basis that:

• there was no legal written order from the president regarding the WOD;
• the Philippine National Police’s memorandum circular unlawfully empowered police to kill alleged drug users; and
• reporting of alleged drug users is done anonymously via tip offs, ‘without any safeguards for protecting innocent persons’. This effectively means anyone can be added to the drug users lists without due process.

Another prominent case led by FLAG under its current chairman, Atty Jose Manual Diokno, was that of 17-year-old Kian delos Santos, who was killed in an anti-drug operation in Caloocan City on August 16, 2017. FLAG provided legal assistance to the Delos Santos family and filed cases against the police to the Caloocan City Regional Trial Court. The court found three policemen guilty of murder in November 2018.

The results have been mixed. The Supreme Court has not ruled on the FLAG petition and has sided with the Duterte government in other cases like dismissing the petition questioning the validity of Duterte’s withdrawal from the ICC. However, the court has criticised the WOD in some decisions. In June 2020, for example, the court used their ruling in People of the Philippines vs. Jerry Sapla to emphasise the importance of upholding the Bill of Rights in relation to the WOD.

Social mobilisations: helping survivors

Social mobilisation against the WOD has been in the form of providing rehabilitative services to former illegal drug users and families of WOD victims. This type of contestation is indirect because it focuses more on survivors, but NGOs carrying out such activities also lobby against the WOD.

A good example is Rise Up for Life and for Rights , an alliance started in response to the WOD killings. Rise up focuses on mothers of victims slain in the WOD. They facilitate grief and trauma workshops and provide psycho-social support for mothers and other family members of victims, while actively advocating for the government to stop and investigate the killings.

Another organisation that empowers survivors is the Solidarity with Orphan and Widows   created by a local Catholic parish church in Barangay Payatas. Aside from providing psychological and social support, SOW also partners with private organisations and individuals to provide jobs for grieving families.

Meanwhile, the Center for Christian Recovery provides rehabilitation services including medical, psychological and trauma treatment to former drug users.

Most NGOs working in the social mobilisation space are religious in nature. SOW follows tenets of Catholicism while Rise Up and Center for Christian Recovery follow evangelical doctrines. These organisations’ religious underpinnings shape their approach towards rehabilitation. Their religious backgrounds also highlight the influence of the Catholic and other Christian Churches in shaping civil society movements in the Philippines.

To what extent do these mobilisations and contestations impact the WOD?

Deeper analysis of the socio-political context in the Philippines, and data gathering with local actors are needed to understand the goals, strategies, and impacts of these contestations.

The high level of Duterte’s popularity and the fact that the WOD continues, shows that these mobilisations have had minimal effect in terms of mitigating the human rights impacts of the WOD. Despite five years of WOD human rights violations, Duterte has maintained high approval ratings. In December 2019 , before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Duterte’s net satisfaction rating stood at 72 percent, according to the Social Weather Station . In October 2020, eight months into the pandemic, the most recent Pulse Asia survey showed that 91 percent of Filipinos were satisfied with Duterte’s performance while his trust rating was at 87 percent. Pulse Asia, one of the Philippines’ most credible poll firms, noted that Duterte may end his term as the most popular president ever, maintaining an approval rating of above 75 percent for most of his term.

But I argue the contestations outlined above have had significant impact. Political mobilisations have resulted in increasing international pressure from international organisations. This pressure led Duterte’s Department of Justice to conduct its own investigation on the WOD even if this has not led to local prosecutions of police . However, the absence of the Commission on Human Rights and local NGOs in the investigations also highlight the limitations of self-reporting in human rights .

Legal mobilisations have led to the Supreme Court criticising some aspects of the WOD like illegal searches and anonymous tip offs, while upholding individual rights against the abuse of these processes upholding individual rights against illegal searches and anonymous tip offs to police. The Court also ordered the release of tens of thousands of documents related to the WOD killings. This action can be used as the basis for future legal cases and investigations.

Lastly, social mobilisations have led to rehabilitation programs that have a positive impact on the well-being and safety of former drug users and family members of slain drug users. This impact is not insignificant to many individuals’ personal circumstances.

Duterte is set to step down in June 2022, and his daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte , is a potential successor for the administration. Opposition groups have already launched a broad coalition, 1Sambayanan , to field candidates against the Duterte administration.

Whether the WOD will continue depends largely on who wins the May 2022 presidential elections. Perhaps, the biggest and most effective contestation against the WOD will be the democratic process that resulted in Duterte’s election as President. But for this to happen, it is crucial for opposition groups to make the WOD a key election issue and to continue engaging presidential hopefuls about it. Doing so creates the possibility of claiming justice for the victims and survivors.

Image: A demonstration against the ‘war on drugs’, Philippines, 2017. Credit: 350.org/Flickr .

• Date: July 12, 2021   |
• DOI: 10.37839/MAR2652-550X7.4    |
• Edition: Edition 7, 2021

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My Views on The War on Drugs in The Philippines

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The human rights consequences of the war on drugs in the Philippines

Subscribe to this week in foreign policy, vanda felbab-brown vanda felbab-brown director - initiative on nonstate armed actors , co-director - africa security initiative , senior fellow - foreign policy , strobe talbott center for security, strategy, and technology @vfelbabbrown.

August 8, 2017

• 18 min read

On August 2, 2017, Vanda Felbab-Brown submitted a statement for the record for the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the human rights consequences of the war on drugs in the Philippines. Read her full statement below.

I am a Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution.  However, as an independent think tank, the Brookings Institution does not take institutional positions on any issue.  Therefore, my testimony represents my personal views and does not reflect the views of Brookings, its other scholars, employees, officers, and/or trustees.

President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs in the Philippines is morally and legally unjustifiable. Resulting in egregious and large-scale violations of human rights, it amounts to state-sanctioned murder. It is also counterproductive for countering the threats and harms that the illegal drug trade and use pose to society — exacerbating both problems while profoundly shredding the social fabric and rule of law in the Philippines. The United States and the international community must condemn and sanction the government of the Philippines for its conduct of the war on drugs.

THE SLAUGHTER SO FAR

On September 2, 2016 after a bomb went off in Davao where Duterte had been  mayor for 22 years, the Philippine president declared a “state of lawlessness” 1 in the country. That is indeed what he unleashed in the name of fighting crime and drugs since he became the country’s president on June 30, 2016. With his explicit calls for police to kill drug users and dealers 2 and the vigilante purges Duterte ordered of neighborhoods, 3 almost 9000 people accused of drug dealing or drug use were killed in the Philippines in the first year of his government – about one third by police in anti-drug operations. 4 Although portrayed as self-defense shootings, these acknowledged police killings are widely believed to be planned and staged, with security cameras and street lights unplugged, and drugs and guns planted on the victim after the shooting. 5 According to the interviews and an unpublished report an intelligence officer shared with Reuters , the police are paid about 10,000 pesos ($200) for each killing of a drug suspect as well as other accused criminals. The monetary awards for each killing are alleged to rise to 20,000 pesos ($400) for a street pusher, 50,000 pesos ($990) for a member of a neighborhood council, one million pesos ($20,000) for distributors, retailers, and wholesalers, and five million ($100,000) for “drug lords.” Under pressure from higher-up authorities and top officials, local police officers and members of neighborhood councils draw up lists of drug suspects. Lacking any kind transparency, accountability, and vetting, these so-called “watch lists” end up as de facto hit lists. A Reuters investigation revealed that police officers were killing some 97 percent of drug suspects during police raids, 6 an extraordinarily high number and one that many times surpasses accountable police practices. That is hardly surprising, as police officers are not paid any cash rewards for merely arresting suspects. Both police officers and members of neighborhood councils are afraid not to participate in the killing policies, fearing that if they fail to comply they will be put on the kill lists themselves.

Similarly, there is widespread suspicion among human rights groups and monitors, 7 reported in regularly in the international press, that the police back and encourage the other extrajudicial killings — with police officers paying assassins or posing as vigilante groups. 8 A Reuters interview with a retired Filipino police intelligence officer and another active-duty police commander reported both officers describing in granular detail how under instructions from top-level authorities and local commanders, police units mastermind the killings. 9 No systematic investigations and prosecutions of these murders have taken place, with top police officials suggesting that they are killings among drug dealers themselves. 10

Such illegal vigilante justice, with some 1,400 extrajudicial killings, 11 was also the hallmark of Duterte’s tenure as Davao’s mayor, earning him the nickname Duterte Harry. And yet, far from being an exemplar of public safety and crime-free city, Davao remains the murder capital of the Philippines. 12 The current police chief of the Philippine National Police Ronald Dela Rosa and President Duterte’s principal executor of the war on drugs previously served as the police chief in Davao between 2010 and 2016 when Duterte was the town’s mayor.

In addition to the killings, mass incarceration of alleged drug users is also under way in the Philippines. The government claims that more than a million users and street-level dealers have voluntarily “surrendered” to the police. Many do so out of fear of being killed otherwise. However, in interviews with Reuters , a Philippine police commander alleged that the police are given quotas of “surrenders,” filling them by arresting anyone on trivial violations (such as being shirtless or drunk). 13 Once again, the rule of law is fundamentally perverted to serve a deeply misguided and reprehensible state policy.

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SMART DESIGN OF DRUG POLICIES VERSUS THE PHILIPPINES REALITY

Smart policies for addressing drug retail markets look very different than the violence and state-sponsored crime President Duterte has thrust upon the Philippines. Rather than state-sanctioned extrajudicial killings and mass incarceration, policing retail markets should have several objectives: The first, and most important, is to make drug retail markets as non-violent as possible. Duterte’s policy does just the opposite: in slaughtering people, it is making a drug-distribution market that was initially rather peaceful (certainly compared to Latin America, 14 such as in Brazil 15 ) very violent – this largely the result of the state actions, extrajudicial killings, and vigilante killings he has ordered. Worse yet, the police and extrajudicial killings hide other murders, as neighbors and neighborhood committees put on the list of drug suspects their rivals and people whose land or property they want to steal; thus, anyone can be killed by anyone and then labeled a pusher.

The unaccountable en masse prosecution of anyone accused of drug trade involvement or drug use also serves as a mechanism to squash political pluralism and eliminate political opposition. Those who dare challenge President Duterte and his reprehensible policies are accused of drug trafficking charges and arrested themselves. The most prominent case is that of Senator Leila de Lima. But it includes many other lower-level politicians. Without disclosing credible evidence or convening a fair trial, President Duterte has ordered the arrest of scores of politicians accused of drug-trade links; three such accused mayors have died during police arrests, often with many other individuals dying in the shoot-outs. The latest such incident occurred on July 30, 2017 when Reynaldo Parojinog, mayor of Ozamiz in the southern Philippines, was killed during a police raid on his house, along with Parojinog’s wife and at least five other people.

Another crucial goal of drug policy should be to enhance public health and limit the spread of diseases linked to drug use. The worst possible policy is to push addicts into the shadows, ostracize them, and increase the chance of overdoses as well as a rapid spread of HIV/AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, and hepatitis. In prisons, users will not get adequate treatment for either their addiction or their communicable disease. That is the reason why other countries that initially adopted similar draconian wars on drugs (such as Thailand in 2001 16 and Vietnam in the same decade 17 ) eventually tried to backpedal from them, despite the initial popularity of such policies with publics in East Asia. Even though throughout East Asia, tough drug policies toward drug use and the illegal drug trade remain government default policies and often receive widespread support, countries, such as Thailand, Vietnam, and even Myanmar have gradually begun to experiment with or are exploring HARM reduction approaches, such as safe needle exchange programs and methadone maintenance, as the ineffective and counterproductive nature and human rights costs of the harsh war on drugs campaign become evident.

Moreover, frightening and stigmatizing drug users and pushing use deeper underground will only exacerbate the spread of infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and tuberculosis. Even prior to the Duterte’s brutal war on drugs, the rate of HIV infections in the Philippines has been soaring due to inadequate awareness and failure to support safe sex practices, such as access to condoms. Along with Afghanistan, the Philippine HIV infection rate is the highest in Asia, increasing 50 percent between 2010 and 2015. 18 Among high-risk groups, including injection- drug users, gay men, transgender women, and female prostitutes, the rate of new infections jumped by 230 percent between 2011and 2015. Duterte’s war on drugs will only intensify these worrisome trends among drug users.

Further, as Central America has painfully learned in its struggles against street gangs, mass incarceration policies turn prisons into recruiting grounds for organized crime. Given persisting jihadi terrorism in the Philippines, mass imprisonment of low-level dealers and drug traffickers which mix them with terrorists in prisons can result in the establishment of dangerous alliances between terrorists and criminals, as has happened in Indonesia.

The mass killings and imprisonment in the Philippines will not dry up demand for drugs: the many people who will end up in overcrowded prisons and poorly-designed treatment centers (as is already happening) will likely remain addicted to drugs, or become addicts. There is always drug smuggling into prisons and many prisons are major drug distribution and consumption spots.

Even when those who surrendered are placed into so-called treatment centers, instead of outright prisons, large problems remain. Many who surrendered do not necessarily have a drug abuse problem as they surrendered preemptively to avoid being killed if they for whatever reason ended up on the watch list. Those who do have a drug addiction problem mostly do not receive adequate care. Treatment for drug addiction is highly underdeveloped and underprovided in the Philippines, and China’s rushing in to build larger treatment facilities is unlikely to resolve this problem. In China itself, many so-called treatment centers often amounted to de facto prisons or force-labor detention centers, with highly questionable methods of treatment and very high relapse rates.

As long as there is demand, supply and retailing will persist, simply taking another form. Indeed, there is a high chance that Duterte’s hunting down of low-level pushers (and those accused of being pushers) will significantly increase organized crime in the Philippines and intensify corruption. The dealers and traffickers who will remain on the streets will only be those who can either violently oppose law enforcement and vigilante groups or bribe their way to the highest positions of power. By eliminating low-level, mostly non-violent dealers, Duterte is paradoxically and counterproductively setting up a situation where more organized and powerful drug traffickers and distribution will emerge.

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Inducing police to engage in de facto shoot-to-kill policies is enormously corrosive of law enforcement, not to mention the rule of law. There is a high chance that the policy will more than ever institutionalize top-level corruption, as only powerful drug traffickers will be able to bribe their way into upper-levels of the Philippine law enforcement system, and the government will stay in business. Moreover, corrupt top-level cops and government officials tasked with such witch-hunts will have the perfect opportunity to direct law enforcement against their drug business rivals as well as political enemies, and themselves become the top drug capos. Unaccountable police officers officially induced to engage in extrajudicial killings easily succumb to engaging in all kinds of criminality, being uniquely privileged to take over criminal markets. Those who should protect public safety and the rule of law themselves become criminals.

Such corrosion of the law enforcement agencies is well under way in the Philippines as a result of President Duterte’s war on drugs. Corruption and the lack of accountability in the Philippine police l preceded Duterte’s presidency, but have become exacerbated since, with the war on drugs blatant violations of rule of law and basic legal and human rights principles a direct driver. The issue surfaced visibly and in a way that the government of the Philippines could not simply ignore in January 2017 when Philippine drug squad police officers kidnapped a South Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo and extorted his family for money. Jee was ultimately killed inside the police headquarters. President Duterte expressed outrage and for a month suspended the national police from participating in the war on drugs while some police purges took places. Rather than a serious effort to root out corruption, those purges served principally to tighten control over the police. The wrong-headed illegal policies of Duterte’s war on drugs were not examined or corrected. Nor were other accountability and rule of law practices reinforced. Thus when after a month the national police were was asked to resume their role in the war on the drugs, the perverted system slid back into the same human rights violations and other highly detrimental processes and outcomes.

WHAT COUNTERNARCOTICS POLICIES THE PHILIPPINES SHOULD ADOPT

The Philippines should adopt radically different approaches: The shoot-to-kill directives to police and calls for extrajudicial killings should stop immediately, as should dragnets against low-level pushers and users. If such orders are  issued, prosecutions of any new extrajudicial killings and investigations of encounter killings must follow. In the short term, the existence of pervasive culpability may prevent the adoption of any policy that would seek to investigate and prosecute police and government officials and members of neighborhood councils who have been involved in the state-sanctioned slaughter. If political leadership in the Philippines changes, however, standing up a truth commission will be paramount. In the meantime, however, all existing arrested drug suspects need to be given fair trials or released.

Law-enforcement and rule of law components of drug policy designs need to make reducing criminal violence and violent militancy among their highest objectives. The Philippines should build up real intelligence on the drug trafficking networks that President Duterte alleges exist in the Philippines and target their middle operational layers, rather than low-level dealers, as well as their corruption networks in the government and law enforcement. However, the latter must not be used to cover up eliminating rival politicians and independent political voices.

To deal with addiction, the Philippines should adopt enlightened harm-reduction measures, including methadone maintenance, safe-needle exchange, and access to effective treatment. No doubt, these are difficult and elusive for methamphetamines, the drug of choice in the Philippines. Meth addiction is very difficult to treat and is associated with high morbidity levels. Instead of turning his country into a lawless Wild East, President Duterte should make the Philippines the center of collaborative East Asian research on how to develop effective public health approaches to methamphetamine addiction.

IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. POLICY

It is imperative that the United States strongly and unequivocally condemns the war on drugs in the Philippines and deploys sanctions until state-sanctioned extrajudicial killings and other state-authorized rule of law violations are ended. The United States should adopt such a position even if President Duterte again threatens the U.S.-Philippines naval bases agreements meant to provide the Philippines and other countries with protection against China’s aggressive moves in the South China Sea. President Duterte’s pro-China preferences will not be moderated by the United States being cowed into condoning egregious violations of human rights. In fact, a healthy U.S.-Philippine long-term relationship will be undermined by U.S. silence on state-sanctioned murder.

However, the United States must recognize that drug use in the Philippines and East Asia more broadly constitute serious threats to society. Although internationally condemned for the war on drugs, President Duterte remains highly popular in the Philippines, with 80 percent of Filipinos still expressing “much trust” for him after a year of his war on drugs and 9,000 people dead. 19 Unlike in Latin America, throughout East Asia, drug use is highly disapproved of, with little empathy for users and only very weak support for drug policy reform. Throughout the region, as well as in the Philippines, tough-on-drugs approaches, despite their ineffective outcomes and human rights violations, often remain popular. Fostering an honest and complete public discussion about the pros and cons of various drug policy approaches is a necessary element in creating public demand for accountability of drug policy in the Philippines.

Equally important is to develop better public health approaches to dealing with methamphetamine addiction. It is devastating throughout East Asia as well as in the United States, though opiate abuse mortality rates now eclipse methamphetamine drug abuse problems. Meth addiction is very hard to treat and often results in severe morbidity. Yet harm reduction approaches have been predominately geared toward opiate and heroin addictions, with substitution treatments, such as methadone, not easily available for meth and other harm reduction approaches also not directly applicable.

What has been happening in the Philippines is tragic and unconscionable. But if the United States can at least take a leading role in developing harm reduction and effective treatment approaches toward methamphetamine abuse, its condemnation of unjustifiable and reprehensible policies, such as President Duterte’s war on drugs in the Philippines, will far more soundly resonate in East Asia, better stimulating local publics to demand accountability and respect for rule of law from their leaders.

• Neil Jerome Morales, “Philippines Blames IS-linked Abu Sayyaf for Bomb in Duterte’s Davao,” Reuters , September 2, 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-blast-idUSKCN11824W?il=0.
• Rishi Iyengar, “The Killing Time: Inside Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s War on Drugs,” Time , August 24, 2016, http://time.com/4462352/rodrigo-duterte-drug-war-drugs-philippines-killing/.
• Jim Gomez, “Philippine President-Elect Urges Public to Kill Drug Dealers,” The Associated Press, June 5, 2016, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/58fc2315d488426ca2512fc9fc8d6427/philippine-president-elect-urges-public-kill-drug-dealers.
• Manuel Mogato and Clare Baldwin, “Special Report: Police Describe Kill Rewards, Staged Crime Scenes in Duterte’s Drug War,” Reuters , April 18, 2017, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-duterte-police-specialrep-idUSKBN17K1F4.
• Clare Baldwin , Andrew R.C. Marshall and Damir Sagolj , “Police Rack Up an Almost Perfectly Deadly Record in Philippine Drug War,” Reuters , http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/philippines-duterte-police/.
• See, for example, Human Rights Watch, “Philippines: Police Deceit in ‘Drug War’ Killings,” March 2, 2017, https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/02/philippines-police-deceit-drug-war-killings ; and Amnesty International, “Philippines: The Police’s Murderous War on the Poor,” https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/01/philippines-the-police-murderous-war-on-the-poor/.
• Reuters , April 18, 2017.
• Aurora Almendral, “The General Running Duterte’s Antidrug War,” The New York Times , June 2, 2017.
• “A Harvest of Lead,” The Economist , August 13, 2016, http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21704793-rodrigo-duterte-living-up-his-promise-fight-crime-shooting-first-and-asking-questions.
• Reuters, April 18, 2017.
• Vanda Felbab-Brown and Harold Trinkunas, “UNGASS 2016 in Comparative Perspective: Improving the Prospects for Success,” The Brookings Institution, April 29, 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2015/04/global-drug-policy/FelbabBrown-TrinkunasUNGASS-2016-final-2.pdf?la=en.
• See, for example, Paula Miraglia, “Drugs and Drug Trafficking in Brazil: Trends and Policies,” The Brookings Institution, April 29, 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2015/04/global-drug-policy/Miraglia–Brazil-final.pdf?la=en .
• James Windle, “Drugs and Drug Policy in Thailand,” Improving Global Drug Policy: Comparative Perspectives and UNGASS 2016, The Brookings Institution, April 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2015/04/global-drug-policy/WindleThailand-final.pdf?la=en .
• James Windle, “Drugs and Drug Policy in Vietnam,” Improving Global Drug Policy: Comparative Perspectives and UNGASS 2016, The Brookings Institution, April 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/WindleVietnam-final.pdf.
• Aurora Almendral, “As H.I.V. Soars in the Philippines, Conservatives Kill School Condom Plan,” The New York Times , February 28, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/world/asia/as-hiv-soars-in-philippines-conservatives-kill-school-condom-plan.html?_r=0.
• Nicole Curato, “In the Philippines, All the President’s People,” The New York Times , May 31, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/opinion/philippines-rodrigo-duterte.html.

Foreign Policy

Southeast Asia

Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology

August 27, 2021

March 26, 2019

October 22, 2017

The War on Drugs and the Incarceration of Black Women Analytical Essay

Introduction, the war on drugs as the war against black women, works cited.

The war on drugs is often associated with controversy. Issues of gender and race have been raised on numerous occasions in the war against drugs. The war on drugs was declared in the United States over three decades ago, and individuals of color have been greatly affected by this war.

The policies that have been put in place in the war on drugs have exhibited a discriminatory element. In particular, black women and individuals from the minority groups have been targeted in this war. In this case, such individuals are predisposed to harassment from the state officials.

It can be noted that black women have been made to bear the brunt of police cruelties in the name of war on drugs. Considering the plight of black women in the war on drugs, this paper discusses the concept of war on drugs as the war against black women.

The period between 1986 and 1991 was a critical time for the African American community as a whole. At this time, the community was facing a high amount of oppression making them take out their frustration on the use of drugs. Essentially, top of the list of substance abusers were the black females who recorded twice the number of drug offences compared to their male counterparts. Despite the high number of black women incarcerated for drug abuse, authorities do not place emphasis on this issue.

Criminologists often focus on male oriented cases ignoring the plight of the female community. Feminists specialized in criminology have thus dubbed the exclusion of black female drug offenders as discriminatory policies. This has given rise the campaign that accuse criminologist on the war on drugs as the war against black women (Bush-Baskette, p. 5).

The legislations on drugs have been known to affect the black women more than any other group. It has been established that the black women form the rapidly expanding population that is arrested on drug related offences.

Notably, from the late 1980s, the number of black women who have been arrested on drug related offences increased by 800%. This was double the rate of women from other racial groups. In New York, the percentage of black women arrested on drug offences was over 90% while they make barely a third of the women population in the state (Bush-Baskette, p. 43).

The early form of the war on drugs constituted of the arrest of low level drug users and dealers, as opposed to high-ranking people in the trade. This removed the attention from the drug lords who control the dynamics of the industry across the globe.

Another issue regarding the control of drug use was the misrepresentation and improper recording of the people arrested. Fabricated statistics saw the Increase in the number of blacks arrested for the use of drugs and the decrease in the arrest of whites. This triggered a national out raw which advocated for the equal treatment of all races regarding the eradication of drugs.

Women may get involved in drug dealings due to similar reasons as the male culprits. Nonetheless, there are certain gender-specific aspects that should be considered. It can be observed that black women are faced with various forms of oppressions and thus find it difficult to support their families.

In this case, they are forced to engage in street crimes for survival. Most of these women become involved with males who are drug traffickers and find themselves using the prohibited drugs. These women are often threatened with violence and abusive relationship if they refuse to cooperate with their male partners in drug activities (Bush-Baskette, p. 14).

Though the drug trade is said to be profitable, it can be observed that women do not accrue the benefits associated with this trade is equal measure to their male counterparts. Indeed it has been established that women are likely to spend more time in prison on drug related crimes compared to the male dealers. This is because women are likely not able to reveal their male accomplices to earn shorter sentence. On the other hand, males are known to reveal their female counterparts in the trade when required to do so (Chesney-Lind, p. 37).

Heroin was mostly abused by blacks as opposed to whites faring differently from marijuana which was consumed equality by both blacks and whites. The term the war on drugs as the war on women is used to display the level of disregard the society has for the welfare of the black women.

Women associated with drug use recorded fewer cases of the application of force and violence during their consumption or purchase. Poverty and unemployment are the leading factors for the reason of drug on both male and female cases (Stevens and Wexler, p. 28).

The state of Florida recorded drug peddling as the single most recurring primary offence in the years of 1993-1994. Drug peddling was the main offence reported in the criminal files and records. These records only represent the cases concerning drug use, as opposed to drug use accompanied with lesser charges (Nelson, p. 184).

An analysis of the statistics of the incarcerated women lists black women who take the lead representing 51% of the population. Black males take the second slot recording 49% of the country’s population. In the third position are white women who record a competitive 43%. White males take the last slot recording 38% representing the lowest group in reference to the consumption of drugs (Gartner and Kruttschnitt, p. 29).

The police and state authorities are often accused of racial profiling when it comes to war on drugs. This is because there are significant racial disparities observed in arresting, convicting, and incarcerating black women. Arrest, conviction, and incarceration depend on the discretion of the law enforcers in their war on drugs. It is assumed that black women are vessels for prohibited drugs. In this case, the black women are often perceived by the law enforcers as couriers in the drug trade (Stevens and Wexler, p. 19).

Consequently, these women are targeted by the state and federal officers for strip search aimed at identifying drugs. Therefore, black women have been stereotypes as possible drug dealers. It has been established that black women are most likely to be subjected to X-rays after being frisked than white women. On the contrary, the chance of finding black women with contraband products is half compared to white women who stand a high chance of carrying contraband products (Bush-Baskette, p. 45).

Black women are often exposed to regular and offensive strips and searches by the law enforcement agents in the war against drugs. The war on drugs has gone to the extreme. Enhanced surveillance and policing of the reproduction of black women has been reported in the fight against drugs.

Essentially, discriminatory testing of black women who are pregnant to establish drug use is carried out by state officials. Also, there is enhanced surveillance and policing of poor women of African descent under the guise of monitoring child abuse and neglect. This can be argued as being part of a wider scheme in the protracted war on drugs (Bush-Baskette, p. 32).

It is estimated that about two hundred women in over thirty states have faced prosecution on drug related crimes. In some instances, child or fetal abuse is associated with the use of drugs when the woman is pregnant.

In South Carolina State, there is legislation that women who use drugs during while pregnant can be charged with child abuse. In this case, such women are reported to the state authorities by their doctors. Instead of offering rehabilitation services to such women, they are arrested and prosecuted based on child abuse laws (Bush-Baskette, p. 51).

In conclusion, the fight against drugs has come a long way for the time of its rise in the ten years ago. The U.S. has the greatest number of consumers owing to a number of factors. This rate has been on the rise due to the political, social and economic factors experienced today.

Top of the list are black women who are notorious for the frequent consumption of the substance. This is not ideal because a large number of the same culprits are single mothers. It is thus ideal for authorities to place more emphasis on black women so as to tackle the bulk of the problem.

Bush-Baskette, Stephanie. Misguided Justice: The War on Drugs and the Incarceration of Black Women . Bloomington, IN: Universe, Inc, 2010. Print.

Chesney-Lind, Meda. Girls, Women, and Crime: Selected Readings . London [u.a.: SAGE, 2004. Print.

Gartner, Rosemary, and Candace Kruttschnitt. Marking Time in the Golden State: Women’s Imprisonment in California . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Print.

Nelson, Jennifer. Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement . New York [u.a.: New York Univ. Press, 2003. Print.

Stevens, Sally J. and Harry K. Wexler. Women and Substance Abuse: Gender Transparency . New York: Routledge, 1998. Print.

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Essay on War Against Drugs

Students are often asked to write an essay on War Against Drugs in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on War Against Drugs

What is the war against drugs.

The War Against Drugs refers to the global campaign initiated to reduce the illegal drug trade and consumption. Governments have taken a tough stance against the production, distribution, and use of illegal drugs to protect their citizens from the harmful effects of drug abuse.

Scope of the War Against Drugs

The War Against Drugs is not just about fighting drug traffickers and users. It also includes campaigns to educate people about the dangers of drugs, provide drug addiction treatment and support, and reduce drug-related crime. Governments around the world work together to share information and resources to combat drug trafficking and abuse.

Success and Challenges

The War Against Drugs has been successful in reducing drug trafficking and abuse in some countries. This has been achieved by strict law enforcement, effective drug prevention programs, and international cooperation. However, the problem of drug trafficking and abuse still exists, and it continues to be a major challenge for law enforcement agencies, governments, and communities around the world.

250 Words Essay on War Against Drugs

War against drugs: a futile battle.

The “War Against Drugs” is a worldwide campaign led by the United States government to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of illegal drugs. It began in the 1970s and has since been a topic of intense debate.

A Disastrous Approach

The “War Against Drugs” has been a costly and ineffective approach to addressing drug-related issues. It has led to mass incarceration, with the United States having the highest incarceration rate in the world. The criminalization of drugs has disproportionately affected minority communities, leading to racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

Failed Policies

The focus on harsh drug laws and punitive measures has done little to reduce drug use or trafficking. In fact, it has driven the drug trade underground, making it more dangerous and profitable for criminal organizations. The “War Against Drugs” has also failed to address the root causes of drug abuse, such as poverty, mental health issues, and lack of opportunities.

Alternative Approaches

Instead of relying on criminalization and punishment, a more effective approach would be to focus on harm reduction, public health measures, and evidence-based treatment programs. Decriminalization of drugs has been shown to reduce crime, improve public health, and free up resources that can be invested in treatment and prevention programs. Expanding access to affordable and quality healthcare, including mental health services, can also help address the underlying issues that contribute to drug abuse.

The ongoing “War Against Drugs” has been a colossal waste of resources and has caused immense harm to individuals and communities, particularly marginalized groups. Embracing a more compassionate and evidence-based approach, one that prioritizes public health, harm reduction, and treatment, is essential for addressing drug-related issues effectively and humanely.

500 Words Essay on War Against Drugs

War against drugs: a global perspective.

The War on Drugs is a worldwide campaign that began in the early 20th century. It includes various government actions aimed at stopping the illegal drug trade, reducing drug use, and punishing people involved in drug-related activities.

The History of the War on Drugs

The War on Drugs started in the United States in the early 1900s, when the government banned drugs like opium, cocaine, and heroin. In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse “public enemy number one” and launched a massive campaign against drug trafficking. This led to more arrests, harsher sentences, and increased funding for law enforcement. The War on Drugs has since spread to many other countries, and it has had a significant impact on global society.

The Impact of the War on Drugs

The War on Drugs has had both positive and negative effects. On the positive side, it has helped to reduce the availability of illegal drugs and decrease drug use in some areas. It has also led to the arrest and imprisonment of many drug traffickers and dealers. However, the War on Drugs has also had several negative consequences. It has led to the mass incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders, disproportionately affecting people of color and low-income communities. It has also fueled the growth of the black market for drugs, leading to violence, corruption, and instability in many countries.

The Future of the War on Drugs

The War on Drugs has been a costly and controversial policy. In recent years, there has been a growing debate about the effectiveness of the War on Drugs and the need for reform. Some countries, such as Portugal and Uruguay, have decriminalized the possession and use of small amounts of drugs. Other countries are considering legalizing and regulating the sale of certain drugs. The future of the War on Drugs is uncertain, but it is clear that the current approach is not sustainable.

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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s "War on drugs"

Phelim Kine is deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch in New York, where he supervises the organization’s work on Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Philippines. Kine is also an adjunct faculty member in the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College at the City University of New York. He lectures on human rights developments and challenges in Asia. Originally published in Summer 2017.

At about 4 p.m. on August 18, 2016, a police anti-drug raid swept through the neighborhood in Manila’s metropolitan Navotas district where Angelo Lafuente, a 23-year-old small appliances repairman, lived and worked. Two uniformed policemen accompanied by four armed men in civilian clothes detained Lafuente and took him away in a marked white police van. Twelve hours later, police at the Navotas police station presented Lafuente’s panic-stricken family members with photos of Lafuente, dead of gunshot wounds. The police report attributes his death to “unknown” gunmen and ignores the fact that he was last seen alive in police custody.

On September 27th, local government officials in the Manila slum where Virgilio Mirano lived with his wife and two children accused him of being a drug user and ordered him to appear at a ‘mass surrender’ ceremony three days later. Mirano never made it. Instead, just hours later, four armed men in civilian clothes and face masks burst into his home, dragged him into the street, and shot him six times execution-style while his family looked on. Police allowed the gunmen to leave the scene unimpeded through a nearby checkpoint. A police report attributes Mirano’s death to a shoot-out with anti-drug police that ended with Mirano dying in an “exchange of gunfire.” Witnesses dispute that account.

23-year-old Aljon Mesa and his brother, 34-year-old Danilo Mesa, were casual laborers in a fishing port in metro Manila’s Navotas district until their deaths in September. On the afternoon of September 20, 2016, six masked, armed men in civilian clothes detained Aljon and took him away on a motorcycle. About 30 minutes later, a uniformed policeman notified Aljon Mesa’s relatives that he was “breathing his last breath” under a nearby bridge. When family members arrived on the scene, they found him dead from gunshot wounds while the masked armed men who detained him stood nearby. Those men remained on the scene when uniformed police investigators arrived, indicating they were coordinating with the police.

Six days later, uniformed and plain-clothes police detained Danilo Mesa and took him into custody at the local municipal government office. His family could not afford the required bribe to free him, but assumed he would be safe in the custody of municipal authorities. At about 6 p.m., a group of masked, armed men in civilian clothes dragged him from the office. Shortly afterward, passersby found his body. His entire head had been wrapped in packing tape and he had been shot execution-style through the mouth. There are no police records of his killing.

Welcome to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s ‘war on drugs.’ The details of the killings of those four people provide grisly context for the hard data of the more than 7,000 suspected drug users and drug dealers killed by police and “unidentified gunmen” since Duterte took office on June 30, 2016. They also challenge the Duterte government’s persistent denial that police are committing extrajudicial killings. That death toll also doesn’t include the victims that Duterte calls “collateral damage”— children shot dead in anti-drug operations. The extraordinary brutality of the Duterte drug war is undeniable. Many of the victims are found in back alleys or street corners wrapped in packing tape, their bodies bullet-ridden or bearing stab wounds and other signs of torture.  Duterte justifies his anti-drug campaign as a life-or-death struggle against a “drug menace” that he claims threatens to transform the Philippines into a “narco state.” He is untroubled by the fact that the statistics he brandishes to back up this hyperbole are flawed, exaggerated, or fabricated.

The Philippine National Police have claimed responsibility for 2,615 of those killings, an astronomical rise from the 68 killings by police in anti-drug operations between January 1 and June 15, 2016. Police justify that surge in killings on the basis that the victims uniformly “fought back.” Police attribute another 3,603 killings to “vigilantes” or “unidentified gunmen.” An additional 922 killings are classified by police as “cases where investigation has concluded,” despite a lack of any publicly-disclosed evidence of the results of those investigations and whether they resulted in any arrests or prosecution.

Human Rights Watch research into the deaths of Lafuente, Mirano, the Mesa brothers, and 28 other people  killed since Duterte took office exposes the  narrative of the Duterte drug war as a blatant falsehood. Interviews with witnesses and victims’ family members and scrutiny of police records indicate an alarming pattern of unlawful police conduct to cover up extrajudicial executions. Despite the Philippine National Police’s efforts to differentiate between killings by “unidentified gunmen,” or “vigilantes,” and those shot dead while resisting arrest, Human Rights Watch determined there were no meaningful differences in the cases investigated. In several incidents, suspects last seen alive in police custody who were shortly after found dead were categorized by police as “found bodies” or “deaths under investigation.” These discrepancies underminegovernment assertions that rival drug

gangs or “vigilantes” are responsible for most killings.

The incidents analyzed by Human Rights Watch demonstrated police coordination and planning, in some cases with the assistance of local government officials. Those elements of active police and government complicity undermine official assertions that the killings are the work of “rogue” officers or “vigilantes.” Research suggests that police involvement in the killings of drug suspects extends far beyond the officially acknowledged cases of police killings in “buy-bust” drug operations. That research paints a chilling portrait of Filipino victims, the majority of whom are impoverished urban slum dwellers, who have been gunned down in state-sanctioned death squad operations that demolish rule of law protections.

Duterte has defied the highest profile international criticism of the drug war killings. In August, he threatened to withdraw the Philippines from the United Nations in response to criticism from UN officials, including Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights. In October, comments by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) criticizing “high officials” of the Philippine government for public statements that “seem to condone such killings and further seem to encourage State forces and civilians alike to continue targeting these individuals with lethal force” prompted Duterte to threaten to pull the Philippines out of the ICC.

Duterte has also effectively eviscerated meaningful domestic opposition to his drug war. Duterte and pro-Duterte lawmakers have politically attacked his most vocal domestic critic, Senator Leila de Lima, a former justice secretary and chairwoman of the official Commission on Human Rights. Duterte’s Senate loyalists ousted de Lima from the chair of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights in September 2016 in an apparent reprisal for de Lima’s move to convene Senate hearings into the drug war killings.

The hearings prompted a torrent of hateful, misogynist invective from Duterte and other government officials. In August, Duterte went so far as to tell a crowd of supporters that de Lima should “hang herself.”  Duterte’s political vendetta against de Lima climaxed in February with her arrest and detention on politically-motivated charges of violating the country’s Dangerous Drugs Act, which prohibits the “sale, trading, administration, dispensation, delivery, distribution, and transportation of illegal drugs.” De Lima is in prison awaiting trial, but is fearful that her safety is at risk while behind bars.

Despite the thousands of often gruesome killings linked to Duterte’s drug war, his often profane defiance of international criticism, and his steamrolling of domestic critics, he maintains high public popularity ratings. In January, the Pulse Asia polling firm released data that indicated his “trust and approval” ratings were at 83 percent, considerably higher than those of other senior elected officials.

However, surveys on Philippine public assessments of Duterte’s drug war express concern about its death toll, with 94 percent  of those polled in December 2016 expressing support for the arrest, rather than the  killing, of drug suspects. These apparent statistical contradictions reflect how conceptions of the sanctity of life among a relatively pious Catholic-majority nation coexist with the persistent public appeal of Duterte’s plain speaking populist style. Those popularity polls also fail to take into account the influence of a pro-Duterte online ‘keyboard army,’  who harass, intimidate, and try to silence any public expressions of opposition or dismay to the drug war killing campaign on social media.

Duterte’s pursuit of his drug war despite international opprobrium and its skyrocketing death toll is dismaying, but not surprising. Duterte’s presidential electoral platform included lurid pledges of near-biblical scale extrajudicial violence and promises of mass killings of tens of thousands of “criminals,” whose bodies he would dump in Manila Bay. And Duterte had a specific model for that approach to ‘crime control,’ which he honed during his two decades as mayor of Davao City on the southern island of Mindanao.

Davao City is synonymous for many Filipinos with the Davao Death Squad, a shadowy group of gunmen linked to the killings of hundreds of alleged drug dealers, petty criminals, and street children as young as 14. During the 2016 presidential election campaign, Duterte marketed his links to Davao and the existence of the Davao Death Squad as a vote-grabbing branding opportunity rather than a career-derailing political handicap. On the eve of the May 9 presidential elections, which Duterte won against four other candidates with nearly 40 percent of the vote, Duterte told a crowd of more than 300,000 people exactly what to expect if elected. “If I make it to the presidential palace,” he said, “I will do just what I did as mayor. You drug pushers, holdup men, and do-nothings, you better get out because I’ll kill you.”

Human Rights Watch did not uncover any direct evidence of Duterte’s participation in any of the Davao Death Squad killings in a 2009 investigation. But that probe did uncover involvement of Davao City officials and police. Duterte himself has done little to distance himself from allegations of involvement in the death squads. In May 2015, he publicly admitted having a role. “Am I the death squad? True. That is true,” he said.

Duterte retracted that admission days later, but has made numerous statements over the past few decades that seek to justify the extrajudicial killings of criminal suspects. In 2001-2002, Duterte frequently took to local radio or television in Davao to announce the names of “criminals.” The Davao Death Squad would subsequently hunt down and kill some of those same people. In December, Duterte told an international business gathering that he had personally killed criminal suspects while mayor of Davao City and that he would cruise the city on a motorcycle “looking for a confrontation so I could kill.” There have yet to be any successful prosecutions for the killings linked to the Davao Death Squad. Meanwhile, the killings in Davao City continue, and in other Philippine cities the Davao Death Squad has apparently inspired copycat death squad operations. Since September, two self-confessed former members of the Davao Death Squad have come forward and testified to the Philippine Senate that Duterte was the mastermind behind the killings. Duterte has dismissed their allegations and insists that all killings in Davao during his time as mayor were the result of “legitimate police operations.”

Duterte’s pursuit of his drug war has not been diplomatically cost-free. The US Embassy in Manila announced on December 14 that a US government foreign aid agency, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), would deny the Philippine government new funding  due to “significant concerns around rule of law and civil liberties in the Philippines.” The statement justified that decision on the basis that criteria for MCC aid recipients “[include] not just a passing scorecard but also a demonstrated commitment to the rule of law, due process and respect for human rights.” That funding denial by MCC, which disbursed US$434 million to the Philippines from 2011 to 2016,  will most likely lead to the cancellation of a second five-year funding grant for a large-scale infrastructure development project agreed to by the MCC in December 2015.

Duterte got more bad news. In March 2017, visiting EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström warned the Philippine government that human rights-abusing policies, including the drug war, pose a threat to exports to the European Union. She specified that unless the government took action to address the EU’s concerns, the Philippines risks losing tariff-free export of up to 6,000 products under the EU’s human rights benchmarks linked to the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP+) trade program. A Philippine presidential spokesman, Ernesto Abella, dismissed those concerns as evidence of EU ignorance about the Philippines.

But Duterte also has enthusiastic foreign supporters who are untroubled by the human rights implications of the Duterte government’s signature policy. The Chinese Embassy in Manila issued a statement in July 2016 vowing unconditional support for the drug war. A China Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, echoed that position ahead of Duterte’s state visit to China in mid-October by stating, “We understand and support the Philippines’ policies to combat drugs under the leadership of President Duterte.”

On November 30, the Russian ambassador to the Philippines expressed unconditional support for Duterte’s war on drugs, saying he was “deeply impressed” with the president’s efforts to build a relationship with Russia and stating that, “We sincerely wish you every success on your campaign [against drugs]. We understand well your legitimate concerns. As for the methods, we refrain from any comments,” explaining that as a Russian diplomat, he had no right to comment on “domestic developments” in the Philippines.

Duterte has also benefited from the reticence of close bilateral allies to publicly criticize his drug war. Exhibit A for that approach has been  Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, who during his January state visit to the Philippines announced a five-year, US$800 million Japanese government Official Development Assistance package to “promote economic and infrastructure development.” He also promised unspecified financial support for drug rehabilitation projects in the Philippines. In Manila, Abe stated that, “On countering illegal drugs, we want to work together with the Philippines through relevant measures of support,” without elaborating. But during his visit and afterward, Abe made no public reference to the war on drugs and its skyrocketing death toll.

The support of Russia, Japan, and China may help the Duterte government offset the impact of aid and trade curbs imposed the United States and the European Union. But they will not negate the lingering threat to his longer-term legitimacy posed by the threat of eventual domestic or international prosecution for killings linked to his anti-drug campaign. No evidence thus far shows that Duterte planned or ordered specific extrajudicial killings. But his repeated calls for killings as part of his drug campaign could constitute acts instigating the crime of murder. In addition, Duterte’s statements that seek to encourage vigilantes among the general population to commit violence against suspected drug users would constitute incitement to violence. Duterte and senior officials in his government may also face possible charges of crimes against humanity for their repeated calls encouraging the killing of alleged drug dealers and users, indicative of a government policy to attack a specific civilian population.

In January, Duterte vowed to extend his drug war, opening his statement with a promise that it “will solve drugs, criminality, and corruption in three to six months,” until the end of his term in 2022. Duterte may well find that domestic or international efforts for justice for the drug war killings may derail that goal.

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The War on Drugs, Essay Example

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The “Drug War” should be waged even more vigorously and is a valid policy; government should tell adults what they can or cannot ingest. This paper argues for the position that the United States government should ramp up its efforts to fight the war on drugs.  Drug trafficking adversely affects the nation’s economy, and increases crime.  The increase in crime necessitates a need for more boots on the ground in preventing illegal drugs from entering this country.  Both police and border patrol agents are on the frontline on the battle against the war on drugs.  The war on drugs is a valid policy because it is the government’s responsibility to protect its citizens.  Citizens who are addicted to drugs are less likely to contribute to society in an economic manner, and many end up on government assistance programs and engage in crimes.

Introduction

This paper argues that The War on Drugs is a valid policy, and that government has a right, perhaps even a duty to protect citizens from hurting themselves and others.  Fighting drug use is an integral part of the criminal justice system.  Special taskforces have been created to combat the influx of illegal drugs into the United States. The cost of paying police and border control agents is just the beginning of the equation.  Obviously, the detriment to the US economy is tremendous.  But the emotional stress on the friends and family of the drug user represent the human cost of illegal drugs.  Families are literally torn apart by this phenomen.

(1). The cost of police resources to fight the drug war is exorbitant, but necessary .  In order for a war against drugs to be successful, federal, local and state authorities must make sure that there a plenty of drug enforcement officers to make the appropriate arrests.  This means that drug enforcement officers must be provided with the latest equipment, including technology to detect illegal drugs (Benson).  The cost of providing all the necessary equipment to border patrol agents and the policemen and policemen on the frontlines is well justified.  It is necessary to have a budget that will ensure that drug enforcers have everything they need to combat illegal drugs at their disposal.

(2). The government has the responsibility to protect its citizens.   If a substance is illegal, it should be hunted down by law enforcement authorities and destroyed.  The drug user is a victim of society who needs help turning his or her life around.  Without a proper drug policy in effect, the drug user will continue to purchase drugs without the fear of criminal punishment.  That is why the drug war is appropriate.  The government has a right to tell citizens what it cannot ingest, particularly substances that when ingested can cause severe harm to the individual.  This harm may take on the form of addiction.  Once a person is addicted to drugs, the government has treatment programs to help him or her get off drugs.  The economic cost of preventing illegal drugs from getting into the wrong hands, and the cost of drug treatment is worth the financial resources expended because people who are not addicted to drugs are more involved in society and in life in general (Belenko).

(3). Anti-drug policies tend to make citizens act responsibly .  Adult drug users must understand that what they are doing is negatively impacting society.  Purchasing illegal drugs drains the nation’s economy.  These users have probably been in and out of drug rehabilitation programs many times with little to no success.  These drug programs are run by either the federal, state, or local governments (Lynch).   Each failed incident of a patient going back to the world of drugs costs the taxpayers money.  Once the drug user is totally rehabbed, he or she will realize the drag that he or she has been on society.  Therefore, the drug treatment centers are a way to teach adults how to be more responsible.

(4). Drug regulation in the United States has an effect on the international community.  America’s image to the rest of the world is at stake.  If America cannot control its borders, rogue leaders of other countries will think that America is soft on drugs.  This in turn makes America’s leaders look weak (Daemmrich).  Border patrol agents on the United States-Mexican border represent the best that America has to offer in preventing illegal drugs from entering the United States.  It is imperative that part of the drug policy of the United States provides enough financial resources for the agents to do their job.  The international community must see a strong front from the United States against illegal drugs.  Anything less is a sign of weakness in the eyes of international leaders, including our allies.

(5). Women are disproportionately affected by illegal drug use and therefore neglect their children.   As emotional beings, women have to contend with many issues that evade men (Gaskins).  The woman’s primary responsibility is to her children.  If a woman is a drug user, her children will be neglected.  Most of the children end up becoming wards of the state.  Having to cloth and feed children places a major burden on organizations that take these children of addicts in.  A drug addict cannot take care of herself, and she certainly cannot take care of her children.  Both the woman and her children will become dependent on the government for food and shelter.  This person is not a productive member of society.  Increased prison sentences may seem harsh for women with children, but these sentences may serve as deterrence from using drugs.

(6 ). If students know that the criminal penalty is severe, it may serve as a deterrent to drug related crimes.   Educating students, while they are still in school about the harmful effects and consequences of using drugs is imperative in fighting the drug war.  However, many students may tune out the normal talk about how drugs affect them physically.  The key to effectively making the point to students that illegal drug use is wrong is to present them with the consequences of having a felony drug conviction on their record (Reynolds). In fact, having a criminal record is bad enough without the felony drug conviction.  Students should know that such a record can prevent them from obtaining employment in the future.  It should be stressed that many companies will not hire anyone with a criminal record, especially if the conviction was related to illegal drugs.  The threat of extensive incarceration should also deter students from using illegal drugs or participating in drug related activities.

(7). Parents who use drugs in front of their children are bad influences and contribute to the delinquency of the minor.    Children are extremely impressionable, and starting to use drugs at a young age can be devastating to their future.  The government fights the drug war to protect law abiding citizens, and to punish criminals.  People who use illicit drugs are criminals, and parents who influence their children by introducing and approving of their drug use need to suffer severe penalties under the law (Lynch).  It is more than likely that the parents that use drugs have been incarcerated at one time or the other.  This incarceration may be drug related.  Children see their parents go in and out of jail, so that becomes their “normal.” Thus you have generational incarcerations which are an expense to prison sector and taxpayers.  The government is right in ramping up the penalties on drug use in front of children.

(8). People who use drugs are likely to drive under the influence which has all sorts of possible negative outcomes. There are so many consequences resulting from illegal drug use that they are too numerous to list.  One of the “unspoken” consequences is driving under the influence.  The entire population has made a concerted effort to curtail drinking and driving, and the deaths from alcohol related traffic accidents gave gone down significantly since strict laws have been put in place.  The government needs to find a way to crack down on drivers who are under the influence of illegal drugs (Belenko).  Drivers must be clear headed and focused to driver responsibly.  The government should get harsher, and find a way to test (as in the breathalyzer for alcohol) for marijuana.  The government has been successful in keeping the number of drunken drivers down.  However, many drivers are still legally able to pass a breathalyzer test if they are smoking marijuana, or using other drugs.  Accidents can still happen regardless of what drug the driver is under the influence of.  The government must find a way to crack down on these drivers who think that they are beating the system.

If the United States wants to get serious on the war on drugs, it should wage the war more vigorously.  Although the war on drugs is a valid policy, it needs to receive more attention and financial resources from the Federal government.  Preventing illegal drugs from crossing our borders is costly, but highly effective if there are plenty of border patrol agents on the United States-Mexican border.  This is the main avenue by which illegal drugs make it into the United States.  The argument that the government has the right to tell citizens what they can ingest is correct.  This is because it is the government’s responsibility to protect its citizens.  Keeping people off of drugs makes for productive citizens who contribute to building a drug free society.

Works Cited

Belenko, Steven R., ed. Drugs and Drug Policy in America: A Documentary History. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000. Questia. Web. 2 Nov. 2012.

Benson, Bruce L., Ian Sebastian Leburn, and David W. Rasmussen. “The Impact of Drug Enforcement on Crime: An Investigation of the Opportunity Cost of Police Resources.” Journal of Drug Issues 31.4 (2001): 989+. Questia. Web. 2 Nov. 2012.

Daemmrich, Arthur A. Pharmacopolitics: Drug Regulation in the United States and Germany. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 2004. Questia. Web. 2 Nov. 2012.

Gaskins, Shimica. “”Women of Circumstance”-The Effects of Mandatory Minimum Sentencing on Women Minimally Involved in Drug Crimes.” American Criminal Law Review 41.4 (2004): 1533+. Questia. Web. 2 Nov. 2012.

Lynch, Timothy, ed. After Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2000. Questia. Web. 2 Nov. 2012.

Reynolds, Marylee. “Educating Students about the War on Drugs: Criminal and Civil Consequences of a Felony Drug Conviction.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 32.3/4 (2004): 246+. Questia. Web. 2 Nov. 2012.

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