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In September, a pre-trial chamber of the ICC granted the prosecutor’s request to open a formal investigation into alleged crimes against humanity in the Philippines from the time the country ratified the ICC’s Rome Statute on November 1, 2011, until its withdrawal from the treaty on March 16, 2019. In its decision to greenlight the investigation, the pre-trial chamber stated the government’s anti-drug campaign “cannot be seen as a legitimate law enforcement operation, and the killings neither as legitimate nor as mere excesses in an otherwise legitimate operation.” It further said there has been “a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population” as part of a state policy.

The decision echoed claims by various rights groups that between 12,000 and 30,000 people have been killed in the “drug war.” The government’s own data shows more than 6,190 people were killed in police operations from 2016 to August 2021.

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The country’s 52-year-long communist insurgency continued in 2021. During counter-insurgency operations against the New People’s Army (NPA), government security forces frequently targeted leftist activists, including peasant leaders, environmentalists, human rights lawyers, and Indigenous group heads, among others. Government and military officials often “red-tag” such individuals through announcements and social media, putting them at grave risk of attack.

In March, nine individuals belonging to different activist groups were killed during police raids in the Calabarzon region south of Manila. All those killed were previously accused of communist involvement. The simultaneous police raids occurred two days after President Duterte publicly ordered law enforcement officials to “finish off” communist insurgents. Human rights groups rejected claims that the victims were rebels or rebel supporters. In December 2020, police killed nine members of an Indigenous people’s community on the island of Panay, in the central Philippines.

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There were fewer serious Covid-19-related rights violations in the Philippines during the second year of the pandemic compared to the first, which had seen harsh treatment of quarantine violators by law enforcement. Age-based restrictions on movement for those under 18 and over 65 years of age prevented children and older people from leaving their homes, although in October, the government eased this restriction. Schools remained closed nationwide at time of writing, affecting the education of 28.5 million students.

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On June 4, OHCHR published a report that found “numerous systematic human rights violations” in the Philippines, among them the killing of 208 human rights defenders and activists since 2015.

Leftist activists and human rights defenders were key targets of physical and online attacks. On August 17, unidentified gunmen shot dead Zara Alvarez, a legal worker for the human rights group Karapatan, in Bacolod City in the central Philippines. Alvarez’s killing came a week after peasant leader Randall Echanis was found dead, apparently tortured, in his home in Quezon City. Alvarez was the 13th Karapatan member killed during the Duterte administration.

The attacks against activists occurred in the context of the government’s campaign against the communist New People’s Army insurgency. Government and military officials have accused Karapatan and the other groups in its network of being supporters of the insurgents in a “red-tagging” campaign that puts them at heightened risk of attack. The military, national security agencies, and the police have actively used social media to convey threats that have resulted in tens of red-tagged people being killed in the past year.