Failing to fulfill the responsibility: Led to worse

Over the years, the Philippines has been very active on different international
organizations to help and support different agendas and aim for the betterment of each country
and citizen. Long before the candidacy of President Duterte, a lot of neighborhoods here in the
country have its own swarming of young drug users. It is quite alarming knowing that at a simple
age they have tried the things that can affect their future. So the hope of decreasing this
phenomena is alive when President Duterte was appointed as the next president. At the start of
his term, he showed quite good leadership and authority but as the time went by, more people
have recognized that the war on drugs was no longer in line with human rights. It exploits
different wrongdoing in the politics thus making the international organizations interfere. Soon
enough President Duterte’s colorful words about eliminating the drug culture here and the
different allegations of human rights abuse was noticed by international organizations.

During the UN Human Rights Council’s 44th session, High Commissioner for Human
Rights Michelle Bachelet, said that the policy had created a cycle of “impunity” and is
responsible for “systematic” violence leading to thousands of extrajudicial killings since Duterte
launched the nationwide campaign after being elected in 2016. This showed how the United
Nations was greatly alarmed by the failure of decreasing substance abuse in the Philippines.
They have received a lot of complaints about various groups about the inhumane process of
eliminating drug users and the violation of human rights. It caught the attention of different
leaders of the country and voted to investigate the action of the President. It hit the climax of the
year 2017-2018 when almost 20,000 people were killed, because of this different vigilantes
were investigating and trying to expose the illegal killing of the government. Furthermore, the
campaign reached the worst extent where even the non-drug users became a victim of the
inhumane operation of the authorities responsible for the said campaign. Another factor was the
rewards that await for the cops who have killed a certain drug user. Due to the desire of some
abusive authorities for getting a big amount of money, they killed innocent ones as well and later
on, framed them as drug users. The case of the Senior High School student named Kian Delos
Santos who was killed during 2017 for allegedly involving in the use of drugs and drug pushing
is an example for this claim. The victim Kian was seen begging on his knees to the cops trying
to catch him that he badly wanted to go home and imploring the cops to stop now because he
still got an exam tomorrow yet Kian was shot to death. Upon investigation, Kian was proven to
be innocent and the police were charged for murdering him. It is devastating to encounter
happenings like this in our country. The case above is not the only downside of the War on
Drugs campaign led by Duterte’s administration; rather there are lots of similar cases that still
remain without getting justice.

With these, the involvement of non-state institutions with policies formed by the
Government as well as the intervention of the international organization in this disturbing issue
arising in the country wherein there is an involvement of innocence’s deaths and injustices
brought various conflicts that lead to worsening the current state that the country has right now.
The downside of it is the interaction of these different associations lead to growing a gap
between them and they are likely to be enemies now. The government is trying to remain more
powerful and superior due to it. On the other hand, non-state institutions became much more
aware and more observant to at least keep track of the potential disadvantageous happening
caused by the eradication program of drugs.

Overall, the eradication program of drugs certainly became a failure. However, due to
the existence of this big platform made by the current administration, it became a way to expose
different injustices and wrongdoings inside and outside the government. Additionally, people
especially the concerned youth became more enlightened and the existence of different
organizations and institutions over Government became much larger in number. A non-state
and a government may have different stands and principles, but peace will still win if there is
unity.