Family members of “drug war” victims watch the livestream of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s initial appearance at the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity, in Quezon City, Philippines, March 14, 2025.
(Manila) – Philippine police and their agents carry out extrajudicial killings with impunity as part of the government’s anti-drug campaign, Human Rights Watch said today, 10 years to the day after then-President Rodrigo Duterte began his vicious “war on drugs.”
The current Philippine president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., has never repudiated the “war on drugs” as a government policy and has yet to rescind the orders and other policy statements issued by Duterte. There have been 1,273 killings in the anti-drug campaign since Marcos became president in June 2022, according to independent monitoring by the Dahas Project. Domestic accountability for the killings remains woefully inadequate, with only five “drug war” killings resulting in convictions of a total of nine police officers since 2016.
“Since Duterte opened his bloody ‘drug war’ a decade ago, Filipinos are still being killed despite President Marcos’ promise to wage a more humane campaign against drugs,” said Lian Buan, Southeast Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Marcos should declare an end to the ‘war on drugs’ and order investigations into drug-related killings by police and others.”
Human Rights Watch interviewed two women whose relatives were killed in 2022 and 2023; one woman whose son was detained in 2025 and then went missing; two community monitors; and a lawyer who has handled cases of arbitrary arrests.
“‘TokHang’ never left. It’s just done in a different way now,” said one community monitor, referring to “Oplan TokHang” (Operation Knock and Plead), the Duterte administration’s signature campaign in which the Philippine National Police or their
