Over 1,200 Drug War Killings Persist Under Marcos

Over 1,200 people have been killed in the Philippine anti-drug campaign since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took office in June 2022. According to data from the University of the Philippines Diliman and Human Rights Watch, extrajudicial killings continue quietly despite Marcos promising a more humane approach. The tactics have shifted from loud, massive raids to secretive plainclothes operations, raising urgent calls from Church leaders and peace advocates for accountability and a definitive end to the deadly policy.

What is the current state of the drug war under Marcos?

A decade after former President Rodrigo Duterte launched his bloody campaign, the violence has not stopped. Independent monitoring by the Dahas Project, a running count by the Third World Studies Center of UP Diliman, recorded 1,273 killings in the anti-drug campaign since Marcos assumed the presidency. While many of us appreciated the iron fist of the past because the drug crisis was destroying our communities, the continuing loss of life demands a hard look at the present. The campaign began in 2016 under the banner of