Several international NGOs have described the impunity of state authorities and even the socalled vigilantes in the drug war campaign. Out of the thousand killings, no one was imprisoned. Rather than investigate the killings, President Duterte even went so far as to defend the police operations and the resulting casualties. Vice-president Leni Robredo issued critical statements against the drug policy of the government as early as 2016. Days after Duterte assumed the presidency, she called on authorities to investigate the 100 reported drug-related cases (Viray, 2016). She argued that the drug problem should be regarded as a public issue rather than using bullets to solve it (ABS-CBN News, 2017). She also exposed the “palit-ulo” scheme, where, a family member will be taken if the person in the drug watchlist cannot be found (ABS-CBN News, 2017). In an effort to discredit her statements, President Duterte called her home city Naga as a hotbed for shabu, implicating her brother-in-law as the person that brought drugs to her home (PhilStar Global, 2018). Another vocal critique of EJK, Senator Leila De Lima, was put into prison for alleged connection to drugs (Iyengar, 2016). The concept of human rights becomes blurred as it is weighted against human lives: And when illegal drug operations turn nasty and bloody, advocates of human rights lash at—and pillory—our law enforcers and this administration to no end. Sadly, I have yet to hear really howls of protest from the human rights advocates and church leaders against drug-lordism, drug dealing and drug pushing as forceful and vociferous as the ones directed against the alleged errant [law]enforcers in the fight against this social scourge… Your concern is human rights, mine is human lives. The lives of our youth are being wasted and families are destroyed, and all because of the chemicals called shabu, cocaine, cannabis, and heroine (President Rodrigo Duterte, 2018 SONA). These summary executions and ineffective remedies violates Article 6.1 and Article 2.3 (a) of the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which was ratified by the Philippines in October 23, 1986. Article 6.1 states that “every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life. Article 2.3 (a) states that “each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to ensure that any person whose rights or freedoms as herein recognized are violated shall have an effective remedy, notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity” (United Nations, 1966). Principle 20 of the Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation was also violated. It specifically states that: Compensation should be provided for any economically assessable damage, as appropriate and proportional to the gravity of the violation and the circumstances of each case, resulting from gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law, such as: (a) Physical or mental harm; (b) Lost opportunities, including employment, education and social benefits; (c) Material damages and loss of earnings, including Panaghoy: The Philippine War on Drugs from the Perspective of Women March 2019 12