The Philippines: “Black Robes, Red Targets” – Caravana Filipina Report

The Caravana Filipina, a fact-finding mission on extrajudicial killing and other gross human rights violations against legal professionals in the Philippines in 2016-2023, released its final report. A joint endeavor of ten organizations, including the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, the mission documented the cases of lawyers, judges, and prosecutors at the time of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs and in connection with their efforts to hold the government accountable. In this report, the mission outlines patterns of retaliation against legal professionals, namely through surveillance and intimidation, red-tagging, lawfare, and extrajudicial killings. The mission reveals that state actors were involved, either directly or through passive consent, in gross human rights violations in the Philippines.