An explosive cocktail Counter-terrorism, militarisation and authoritarianism in the Philippines

CVE, state brutality, populism, terror attacks, human rights, democracy, Phillipines, freedom

Violent groups committing terror attacks have existed in the Philippines since the early 1990s, often posing security threats to the state and the population. Today, it seems that President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration is taking advantage of their existence to justify a counterterrorism agenda which is used to legitimise an ongoing brutal crackdown on segments of opposition groups, political movements, civil society, human rights defenders, and Indigenous and minority populations. Our paper maps how the renewed global drive to counter terrorism, combined with the election of a populist government in the Philippines with autocratic instincts and violent tendencies, has produced an explosive cocktail; one that is having damaging effects on conflict dynamics, civic space and the democratic freedoms of Filipino citizens