Philippine children have been traumatised by abusive drugs war, says Human Rights Watch probe

Thousands of children in the Philippines have suffered lasting physical, emotional and economic harm from the brutal drugs war instigated by Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine president, according to an investigation released by Human Rights Watch on Wednesday. 

The disturbing report, which documents the trauma of children whose parents or guardians have been violently killed, comes a few weeks before an expected decision the UN Human Rights Council to set up an independent international investigation into the Philippines’ controversial counter-drugs operations. 

The spiraling death toll among alleged drug dealers and users since Mr Duterte rose to power in 2016 vowing to “feed the fish in Manila Bay” has caused international alarm. 

The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency has reported that 5,601 drug suspects died during police anti-drug operations from July 1, 2016, to January 31, 2020, with many of those deaths linked to a similar pattern of police claims that the deceased “fought back.”

However, this official tally does not include thousands who have been killed by unidentified gunmen or death squads, many of them with suspected links to the police.  Last year the country's Commission on Human Rights estimated the actual number of drug-war killings could be as high as 27,000.

The latest HRW report opens the curtain on the devastating impact these killings have unleashed on the families, and especially the children, of the dead. 

The 48-page report, “‘Our Happy Family Is Gone’: Impact of the ‘War on Drugs’ on Children in the Philippines,” details the psychological distress and economic hardship experienced after the death of a family breadwinner. 

The increased poverty and trauma have led many children to leave school or compelled them to work. Some children who lost a family member were eyewitnesses to their brutal death, have faced bullying in their school and community or were forced to live on the streets.

Children’s rights advocates have also documented 101 children who were extrajudicially executed or killed as bystanders during anti-drug operations from mid-2016 through 2018. Media reports in 2019 and 2020 show that the killing of children has continued. 

“Filipino children have suffered horribly from President Duterte’s decision to unleash the police and their hit men against suspected drug users,” said Carlos Conde, Philippines researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“The government needs to stop this endless violence that is upending children’s lives and direct assistance to the children harmed.” 

Human Rights Watch interviewed 49 people for the report, including 10 children and 23 parents, relatives, or guardians.

In one example, researchers found that the children of Renato A., a scavenger killed in December 2016 as he attended the wake of an aunt who had also been shot, have experienced enduring psychological distress. 

Karla, the youngest child, who was 10 at the time, saw the killing, cowering in fear beneath her aunt’s coffin as her father was gunned down. 

“When my papa was shot. I saw everything, how my papa was shot. … Our happy family is gone. We don’t have anyone to call father now. We want to be with him, but we can’t anymore,” she said. 

In a similar investigation by The Telegraph last year, Maria, a shy teenager, recounted how she had tried in vain to save her father by clinging to him after a death squad burst into the family home. 

“My father kept begging them: ‘If I have done something wrong please just put me in jail because I have seven children’,” she said.

International efforts to pressure the Duterte administration to curb the violent nature of the drugs war have so far yielded few results. 

In February 2018, the International Criminal Court opened a preliminary examination into complaints filed against President Duterte, prompting the Philippine government to withdraw from the court. 

Last year, the UN Human Rights Council commissioned a comprehensive report on the situation in the Philippines, which is scheduled to be presented at the council’s June session in in Geneva.

“The UN Human Rights Council should create an international inquiry and press the Philippine government to end its deadly ‘drug war,’” Mr Conde said. “Without action now, an entire generation of Filipino children will be victimized by the violence of Duterte’s anti-drug campaign.”