Description
In September 2021, Chief Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan of the International Criminal Court authorised a full investigation into extrajudicial killings undertaken as part of the war on drugs in the Philippines. Civil society organisations in the Philippines played a critical role in bringing the case to the court, in order to seek justice for as many as 30,000 victims of President Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign. Whilst victims who made representations to the court emphasized that they were driven by a desire to bring perpetrators to justice, end impunity, and prevent future crimes in the Philippines, this paper sets this against civil society groups' broader challenge to the war on drugs and the global drugs prohibition regime. Other work on the role of civil society groups in the Philippines has proposed a boomerang model, whereby such groups seek to amplify the issue outside of the country and invite pressure from other states and international organisations. However, pressure from such avenues has often upheld the legitimacy of the drug war, whilst questioning policies that led to human rights abuses. Consequently, this paper will show that the responses of international organisations and states to human rights abuses within the drug war are restricted by commitments to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961. This in turn renders the issue of extrajudicial killings and violence an unfortunate consequence of the global drugs prohibition regime, rather than a common feature of it.
