Police operations and body bags are nothing new to Rio, where state police killed a record 1,810 people last year, nearly five a day. But with the city now in partial shutdown because of Covid-19, and citizens under orders to stay indoors, favela residents are voicing outrage that the police’s terrifying incursions into their communities have not been halted. Friday’s operation – which left 13 people dead – was the latest in a series of deadly police assaults which have continued despite the quarantine imposed by Rio’s hardline governor, Wilson Witzel, in mid-March. “People should be getting help, not getting shot at,” complained congresswoman Renata Souza, who said it was inhumane for such operations to continue during the pandemic.

Colonel Romeo Caramat, the head of drug enforcement for the Philippine National Police, said that ultra-violent approach to curbing illicit drugs had not been effective. “Shock and awe definitely did not work,” he said. “Drug supply is still rampant.” Caramat said the volume of crime had decreased as a result of the drug war, but users could still buy illegal drugs “any time, anywhere” in the Philippines. He said he now favored a new strategy. Rather than quickly arresting or killing low-level pushers and couriers, he wants to put them under surveillance in the hope they lead police to “big drug bosses”.

Shooting from helicopters, armored personnel carriers or at close range, police officers in Rio de Janeiro have gunned down 558 people during the first four months of the year — the highest number in this period since the state began keeping records more than two decades ago. This recent spike comes after years in which the federal and local authorities put in place policies that significantly diminished police killings. But as the country dove into a deep economic and political crisis in 2014, resources for security programs dried up. Criminal gangs reclaimed lost territory in Rio, and across Brazil violence exploded: More than 51,500 people were killed last year. (See also: Jair Bolsonaro will not defeat crime in Brazil by tolerating militias)

During campaigning last year, Rio’s new, far-right governor, Wilson Witzel, promised a “slaughter” of gun-toting drug gangsters using helicopters and snipers – leading to comparisons with the Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody drug war. Now fears are growing that the policy is being implemented in Rio, fed by a record high of 434 deaths in confrontations with police in the first three months of this year. Renata Souza, the chair of the human rights commission at Rio’s legislative assembly, wrote to the UN rapporteur on extrajudicial killings that Witzel was “legitimising” police violence in favelas.

Con disparos desde helicópteros, vehículos blindados con soldados o a quemarropa, los oficiales de la policía de Río de Janeiro abatieron a 558 personas durante los primeros cuatro meses del año, la cantidad más grande desde que las autoridades comenzaron a llevar un registro hace más de dos décadas. Esta cifra reciente sucede después de años en los que las autoridades federales y locales instauraron políticas que disminuyeron los asesinatos a manos de la policía. Sin embargo, debido a que el país cayó en una profunda crisis económica y política en 2014, se agotaron los recursos para los programas de seguridad. Las bandas de delincuentes reclamaron los territorios que perdieron en Río, y estalló la violencia en todo Brasil: el año pasado fueron asesinadas más de 51.500 personas.

At least 122 children, including a one-year-old, have been killed during President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs” in the Philippines, according to a report that concluded some children have been deliberately shot at and targeted as proxies. The study, by the World Organisation Against Torture, adds to growing calls for the UN human rights council to establish an independent investigation into abuses committed under Duterte. Rights groups estimate that tens of thousands of people may have died as a result of unlawful killings during anti-drug operations launched after his election in 2016.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the UN agency charged with developing strategies to reduce global poverty, has strongly criticised current international drug policy, highlighting the disastrous costs it is producing – particularly for the world’s poor. In the agency’s formal submission to the UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs (PDF), launched at the annual UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs which began last week in Vienna, the UNDP argues:

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs has only managed to curb the supply of methamphetamines by less than 1% of annual consumption, proof that it has been a bloody failure, his main political rival, according to Vice President Leni Robredo, who was elected separately to the president.Thousands of suspected drug traffickers and users have been killed in the campaign that Duterte launched soon after he won election in 2016. Robredo, who recently served a brief stint as the president’s drug “tsar”, said vast quantities of the highly addictive drug were available because seizures had barely dented the supply. “It is very clear, based on official data, despite the number of Filipinos killed and the budget spent, the volume of shabu supply curbed didn’t exceed 1%.”

The Colombian government has published a proposed law that will allow it to resume a controversial program of aerial fumigation of coca crops using glyphosate, a weed-killer thought to cause cancer in people exposed to it regularly and in high doses. The plans are in the final stage of their passage to law, and spraying is expected to begin “in the second half of this year,” said Ricardo Vargas, an expert in crop fumigation and coca at National University of Colombia. Communities have not had the help they needed to move away from the coca trade and now will take the brunt of the new spraying program. “Many social leaders, some of whom have been for promoting the substitution of coca, have been threatened or killed.”

Late each night, a dozen women chat and share a meal before hitting the narrow streets of a Manila suburb where a death squad once roamed. They are the "women's patrol," a group of 18 mothers and grandmothers whose nightly walks through the dimly lit alleys of Pateros have been helping to deter shadowy gunmen behind murders of residents linked to illegal drugs. Not long after Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte declared a war on drugs in 2016 and promised thousands would die, Pateros was being terrorized by attackers in hoods and ski masks, known locally as the "bonnet gang." With the town paralyzed by fear, the women decided to arm themselves with flashlights and patrol their community, keeping up a nightly presence to disrupt the bonnet gang.

La 'guerra contra las drogas' iniciada por el presidente de Filipinas, Rodrigo Duterte, está teniendo un impacto físico, emocional y económico en miles de niños por lo que el Consejo de Derechos Humanos de la ONU debería respaldar la apertura de una investigación independiente de los asesinatos y las violaciones contra menores que se han producido en el marco de la misma, reclama Human Rights Watch (HRW). En su informe 'Nuestra familia ya no está': El impacto de la 'guerra contra la 'guerra contra las drogas' en los niños en Filipinas, HRW detalla el sufrimiento de los niños que han perdido a sus padres o tutores, el impacto psicológico vivido y los problemas económicos que han venido aparejados al hecho de la muerte del cabeza de familia.

The Transnational Institute (TNI) has always believed in the need to find global answers to global problems, been a strong defender of multilateralism and an advocate of a well-functioning United Nations which stands as the guarantor of universal human rights. On the drugs question, our position is straightforward: drug control should respect human rights. An accessible but comprehensive primer on why TNI believes that human rights must be at the heart of any debate on drug control.

Human rights lawyers who accused President Rodrigo Duterte of committing crimes against humanity appealed to Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan of the International Criminal Court (ICC) not to halt the investigation of the thousands of killings and other atrocities in the government’s war on drugs. “We ask the ICC not to allow itself to be swayed by the claims now being made by the Duterte administration,” the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), which represents some of the victims in the brutal anti-drug campaign, said in a statement. The group urged ICC to deny the government’s request for a “deferral” of the probe and proceed with a full-blown investigation of the drug war atrocities so as not to dim the “glimmer of hope” that the families of thousands of victims of alleged extrajudicial killings would still get justice.

The INCB dedicated one of its latest series of Alerts, from June 2019, to the issue of ‘State responses to drug-related criminality’, covering decriminalisation, proportionate sentencing, the death penalty and extrajudicial killings. The Board has recently taken a more positive stance towards decriminalisation, in particular under the leadership of Werner Sipp in 2016. In April 2017, the INCB had already published an Alert on the issue, although mostly reiterating language included in the UN drug conventions. This month’s Alert goes into further detail, explaining the ‘more differentiated’ approach adopted by member states in recent years – as 26 countries have now moved towards a decriminalisation model.

Judges at the International Criminal Court approved a formal investigation into possible crimes against humanity allegedly committed under the leadership of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in the context of his "war on drugs". The ICC said in a statement that judges had approved a request by prosecutors to begin the investigation into potential murder as a crime against humanity. Judges' assessment of material presented by prosecutors, was that "the so-called ‘war on drugs’ campaign cannot be seen as a legitimate law enforcement operation", but rather amounted to a systematic attack on civilians. (See also: Philippines: The International Criminal Court goes after Duterte’s drug war | Duterte is worried about the ICC. He should be)

The Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) has assailed the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) for noting the “extrajudicial targeting” of persons suspected of drug-related activities — a violation of international drug control conventions. The DDB said it had been in constant dialogue with the United Nations body and even “expressed openness” to a visit by experts to officially assess the Philippine anti-drug campaign. The DDB said its “only request” was that the INCB “uphold an impartial stance and refrain from considering sources that have not been vetted or validated by its member-states.” In its annual report for 2021, the INCB called on the Philippine government “to take immediate steps to stop and prevent any further extrajudicial targeting and to accelerate the ongoing investigations.”

The chief of police in the Philippines has stepped down after facing historical accusations in the Senate that he protected officers who had resold confiscated drugs and received some of the profits. It was a rapid fall from grace for Oscar Albayalde, the head of the Philippine National Police (PNP), who rose to fame as the enforcer of Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs in Manila before Duterte was appointed president. Albayalde has denied the allegations. Thousands of people have been killed as part of Duterte’s campaign against illegal drugs. Amnesty International called it a “large-scale murdering enterprise”.

Tens of thousands of people may have been killed in the war on drugs since mid-2016 in the Philippines, amid “near impunity” for police and incitement to violence by top officials, the UN human rights office says in a report. The drugs crackdown, launched by President Rodrigo Duterte after winning election on a platform of crushing crime, has been marked by police orders and high-level rhetoric that may have been interpreted as “permission to kill”, according to the report. Police, who do not need search or arrest warrants to conduct house raids, systematically force suspects to make self-incriminating statements or risk lethal force. (See also: Children have become collateral damage with the Philippines’ “Drug War” scarring a generation)