Philippines

Since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took office in June 2022, serious human rights violations have continued in the country largely unabated, including arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances by the security forces. The murderous “war on drugs” has continued though with fewer killings. Leftist civil society activists, journalists, environmentalists, Indigenous leaders, trade unionists, and left-wing politicians remain under serious, at times deadly, threat from “red-tagging” – claims of links to or support for the communist New People’s Army. Police or soldiers implicated in abuses are rarely held to account. In a historic step toward justice, Philippine authorities in 2025 arrested former President Rodrigo Duterte for his alleged role while Davao City mayor and as president in thousands of extrajudicial killings during the “war on drugs,” and transferred him to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.