Destined to fail? Duterte’s war on drugs will not work, UN envoy says

The UN special envoy on extrajudicial executions on Friday issued a veiled rebuke of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly campaign against illegal drugs, saying world leaders have recognised that such an approach does not work.

Agnes Callamard told a forum in Manila on Friday that badly thought out policies not only fail to address drug abuse and trafficking, they also compound the problems and “can foster a regime of impunity infecting the whole justice sector and reaching into whole societies, invigorating the rule of violence rather than law”. She did not mention the Philippines by name.

Callamard is an early critic of the Philippine president’s anti-drug drive, and has been challenged by Duterte to debate his war on drugs that has left thousands of suspected drug dealers and users dead since he took office in June.

Human rights groups say 7,000 to 9,000 have been killed, but the government refutes that, releasing data this week showing nearly 4,600 people were killed in police operations and homicides found to be drug-related.

“In 2016, the general assembly of the world’s government recognised explicitly that the ‘war on drugs’ – be it community based, national or global – does not work,” Callamard said.

She said that other factors exacerbate the problem, including poorly conceived policies, extrajudicial killings, deaths by criminal gangs, vigilante crimes, detention in rehabilitation centres without trial or evaluation and the breakdown of the rule of law.