The threats of anti-mining advocacy in the Philippines: how Duterte's interest-based politics kills environmental defenders and hinders their protection.

Since Rodrigo Duterte was elected as President of the Philippines in 2016, the number of extrajudicial killings of human rights defenders (HRDs) has risen significantly. Especially environmental defenders who oppose natural resource extraction are attacked by state forces. Although the Philippines can be considered a democratic country with human rights provisions enshrined in their national legislation as well as in ratified international legislations, the government is failing to protect HRDs and instead has been using violent methods, such as physical harassment, verbal and written death threats, or arbitrary arrests and unfair trials, to silence them. This paper analyses the reasons for the precarious situation of HRDs. It draws on political and legal literature to analyze the existing patterns in mining conflicts and investigates case studies of extrajudicial killings to understand how the threats against HRDs are embedded in interest-based politics. Here we find that routinized corruption, a climate of impunity, and the use of criminalization are fueling violence and contribute to the helplessness of said defenders. The research further illuminates the weak jurisdiction which suffers from Duterte’s ‘order above law’-approach and struggles to enforce human rights and environmental obligations against the prevalent interests of those in power, such as government authorities, companies, and large-scale investors.